Propaganda

Organizations and governments often spread their ideology through the use of propaganda, spreading slanted information to either further their agendas or to discredit some other group. Worldwide governments have been using propaganda to sway public opinion for many years. In the United States free speech allows us the right to use propaganda in the public unlike many other countries that forbid public displays of viewpoints that don't coincide with the governments.

It is the pride of this nation, the United States of America, that anyone can stand up and vocally oppose our government without any worry of retaliaion. When President Obama gave a speech at a Democratic fundraiser for California's Senator Barbara Boxer a group of gay rights advocates started chanting over his speech. Whether their views of gay rights are accepted by the majority or not doesn't matter, they have that right to express their opinion publicly. To compare this with Canada, suprisingly they have a different veiw on free speech. When conservative Ann Coulter attempted to participate in a debate at the University of Ottawa the vice-president of the university Francois Houle warned her, " freedom of speech is defined differently in Canada than in the U.S. and that she should take care not to step over the line." There are times when just speaking or protesting aren't enough to sway others to a viewpoint and groups borrow from the techniques of adverstising agencies and implement a propaganda campaign.

As a recently as the Iraq war the United States government used propaganda in several ways. Pre-war our government convinced the public it was necessary to invade Iraq by exaggerating and lying about weapons of mass destruction housed in that country. At the start of the war leaflets were dropped over Iraq to persuade the Iraqi military that our fight is with Sadam Hussein and not them. During the war it was discovered in 2008 the New York Times uncovered that the military was feeding only good new about the war to convince the American public everything was going well. Governments aren't the only ones guilty of this type of propaganda, pro-life groups have been doing it since before Roe vs. Wade, they often have posters depicting aborted fetuses in grimm ways. A positive use of propaganda is when an organization like M.A.D.D (Mothers Against Drunk Driving), use propaganda to display posters of horrific accidents caused by drunk driving to discourage the use of driving while intoxicated.

Despite the sometimes untasteful tactics used in propaganda it is a cherished use of free speech in the free world. As soon as a government restricts the use of speech based on morality or tastefulness it becomes a dictatorship or communist type regime like the one in China. Recently China has censored much of the internet so that they may control the information the people receive. Anything that has to do with democracy or revolution is censored on the internet in China along with many other ideas that go against the communist government. Thomas Jefferson wrote, " all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights," is probably the best way to describe our freedom in the United States. It is these freedoms that make the United States stand out over all other countries.