Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Freedom of Speech
One of the recent news articles talked about a marine who is being disciplined because of his activities in protesting. I hope that everyone reading that article gets the whole story and not just part of the story. If you've read this blog before you've probably seen that I'm big on personal freedoms. However, I'm also big on personal responsibilities. In this case, the marine is wrong. Naturally, the antiwar side is making a big deal about a military protester being busted for protesting.
There is no problem with a military member taking part in political activities. Whether it's a war protest or burning books protest, the military member can take part. What they can't do is wear her uniform while doing so. This is what the marine is being busted for. As far as I'm concerned, whether he's active duty or Ready Reserve, he's still in the military, and as such shouldn't be wearing the uniform during a protest.
He's wrong not about protesting; I'm fine with that, but about protesting in uniform. And one other item that doesn't seem to be getting too much air time is that after an officer reminded him about that, the marine's response was, "He [the marine] replied to the e-mail and expressed his opinion that the military should have more important things to worry about and signed off with an expletive."
My guess is that with that email, that marine is pretty much "expletived" himself.
Labels: freedom, government, military
