U.S. Kids Don't Understand First Amendment 2124
l4m3z0r writes "This rather alarming article discusses a study of high-school students in which they were asked about censorship, protected speech, and other aspects of the first amendment. The results are extremely worrisome: "Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories." and this "Three in four students said flag burning is illegal. It's not. About half the students said the government can restrict any indecent material on the Internet. It can't.".."
High School surveys... (Score:1, Informative)
'Tis True (Score:3, Informative)
Student Newspapers and the FA (Score:1, Informative)
Re:The Constitution (Score:5, Informative)
> church and state"
It does. Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...
That is the very essence of the doctrine of separation of church and state, and goes much further to protect this fundamental right of the people than your wished-for clause would.
No one understands the Establishment Clause (Score:3, Informative)
Most Christians I talk to seem to assume that "seperation of church and state" is some made up popular conception which doesn't really exist as Constitutional precedent. "Show me where in the Constitution it says the words 'seperation of church and state'!" they scream. They forget that the Constitution was designed to be an evolving document interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court, and here is what they had to say:
From The United States Supreme Court Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing decision:
Re:No right to privacy. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Two things (Score:5, Informative)
This is the link [cpanda.org] to the opening page which describes the methodology and other information about the study.
Way to go editors. Please don't include actual information for stories.
For those interested you can check my journal for some of the stories which were rejected to see what you've been missing.
Re:Blame where blame is due (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The Constitution (Score:5, Informative)
IOW, not making laws that discriminate between different sects.
Yes, it's true. Etymology helps, so does reading history. It's sad, most people don't know history, and don't read much either.
Re:Of course they don't know, we don't allow them (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Even more scary.. (Score:3, Informative)
Nit-pick -- Dobson was widely mis-quoted and over-analyzed. He was complaining about a pro-gay organization that used familiar cartoon characters (SpongeBob by name, given the current popularity) in their materials. He never said that SpongeBob was gay.
Re:flag burning? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Of course they don't know, we don't allow them (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Is it getting better, or worse? (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/sofa_
and
http://www.cpanda.org/data/profil
Re:Is it getting better, or worse? (Score:4, Informative)
Yawn (Score:2, Informative)
1) are 40% illiterate, of the 60 that are literate, few progress past a third grade level.
2) rarely progress past seventh grade math levels
3) cannot find their own state on a map of the U.S.
4) cannot find the U.S. on a map of the world
5) ???
6) Profit!!!
So the United States is a Legion Of Dumbfucks And Ignoramuses.
Sorry.
Here is the study (Score:5, Informative)
Future of First Amendment Report (456K) PDF [jideas.org]
Country of origin was not taken into account with their research. That variable might be worth examining if student misconceptions were relatively low. Yet, considering the popularity of misconceptions far outweighs the possible number of students born abroad, it's not really worth examining.
Moreover, there are already sociological studies with that data... you can probably find some full-text research on Ebsco.
Re:Even more scary.. (Score:3, Informative)
But not the "I could have my own sitcom" homosexual gay.
Spongebob is "gay" in the "Oh my god this crap is gay" "gay".
It's a joke. Laugh it up Fuzzball!
Re:Of course they don't know, we don't allow them (Score:5, Informative)
http://splc.org/legalresearch.asp?id=3 [splc.org]
Q: Do high school students have First Amendment rights?
A: Yes. As the United States Supreme Court said in 1969, "It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional right to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." But the First Amendment only prohibits government officials from suppressing speech; it does not prevent school censorship at private schools. A state constitution, statute or school policy could provide private school students with free speech protections.
Q: What about the Hazelwood decision?
A: Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, the 1988 U.S. Supreme Court decision, gave public high school officials greater authority to censor some school-sponsored student publications if they chose to do so. But the ruling doesn't apply to publications that have been opened as "public forums for student expression." It also requires school officials to demonstrate some reasonable educational justification before they can censor anything. In addition, some states (currently Arkansas, California, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas and Massachusetts) have passed laws that give students much stronger free expression protection than Hazelwood. Other states are considering such laws.
Q: What is a "public forum for student expression?"
A: A student publication is a public forum for student expression when school officials have given student editors the authority to make their own content decisions. A school can do that either through an official policy or by allowing a publication to operate with editorial independence.
Q: So if policy or practice indicates the content of my publication is determined by students, the Hazelwood decision doesn't apply to me?
A: That's right. If a student publication is a public forum for student expression, then students are entitled to stronger First Amendment protection. School officials are only allowed to censor forum publications when they can show the publication will cause a "material and substantial disruption" of school activities.
Q: What about underground or independent student publications? Are they protected from censorship?
A: Absolutely. Although public schools can establish reasonable restrictions as to the time, place and manner of distribution of underground publications, they cannot absolutely forbid their distribution on school grounds. Like school-sponsored publications that are forums, a school must show substantial disruption before they can censor an independent publication.
Q: Can a student publication be sued for libel, invasion of privacy or copyright infringement?
A: Yes, and occasionally they are. In such cases the individual reporter and the editor could be held legally responsible. Court decisions indicate that a school which does not control the content of a student publication may be protected from liability. Students need to be aware that with press freedom does come legal responsibility.
Q: Can student reporters protect confidential news sources or information?
A: Some states have "shield laws" and others have court-created privileges that protect journalists from having to reveal this kind of information. However, most states have never explicitly applied these laws to student journalists. You should check your state law before making a promise of confidentiality because once you make such a promise, the law requires you to keep it.
Q: Can I use freedom of information laws?
A: Yes. Freedom of information, or "sunshine" laws, require government agencies such as public schools to open many of their official records and
Re:Accuracy (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Regarding flag burning (Score:2, Informative)
Burning the flag is the preferred method of disposing of a US flag that is beyond repair. Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, VFWs, American Legions, etc will often hold flag retirements just for this purpose.
Very few of us will have the opportunity to keep the US flag out of the hands of an enemy, but many of us have flags that have flown and are in tatters.
If we are going to make burning the flag illegal, let's give the whole flag code [usflag.org] teeth... No more car dealerships with a zillion flags, no more Kid Rock with a flag poncho, no more flag imprinted napkins...
Only half tongue in cheek.
Re:Entirely BS (Score:2, Informative)
Just because you're mad about the election is no reason to bust out idiocy like "evil neocon overlord." I hate Bush too, but please, reign in your rhetoric.
You also happen to be wrong. A fair portion of the US population did and more disturbingly STILL DOES believe Iraq was linked to 9/11.
Examples: "41 percent believe that Saddam Hussein helped plan and support the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001."
"37 percent actually believe that several of the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11 were Iraqis."
(Source: http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index .asp?PID=50 [harrisinteractive.com].)
They are not majorities, but they are highly significant numbers. And a majority (62%) of Americans continue to beleive Hussein was strongly linked to Al Qaida. This was as of October 21, 2004.
Bogus point in the article (Score:3, Informative)
Students who take part in school media activities, such as student newspapers or TV production, are much more likely to support expression of unpopular views, for example.
About nine in 10 principals said it is important for all students to learn some journalism skills, but most administrators say a lack of money limits their media offerings."
This is either uninformed or disengenuous. High school newspapers have been excluded from first ammendment protections by the Supreme Court.
http://www.fair.org/extra/9403/teaching-censors
Re:Not just the first amendment (Score:5, Informative)
Re:put yourself in thier shoes (Score:3, Informative)
Wrong: Tinker vs. Des Moines did not grant students the right to freely protest the Vietnam War. It gave students the right to protest provided the protest was a silent, passive expression of opinion, unaccompanied by any disorder or disturbance.
In Hazelwood School District v Kuhlmeier, the Supreme Court said "we hold that educators do not offend the First Amendment by exercising editorial control over the style and content of student speech in school-sponsored expressive activities so long as their actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns." That doesn't sound like they limited censorship just to a principal (and considering hazelwood has been applied to universities, wouldn't make much sense).
What was your point anyway? You did not rebut that students exist under substantially less freedom than the first amendment provides
Re:put yourself in thier shoes (Score:3, Informative)
I don't know about your high school experience, but when I was in HS seven years ago, I was not afforded anything in terms of rights. The interesting thing was they would preach to us for a week on "Student Rights and Responsabilities" in order to cover their butts. As I recall we did not enjoy free speech (no, I am not saying that I was trying to get up and preach on the tables of the lunch room. There was strong censorship in our assignments about what we could right about. When it came to classroom discussion on political ideas, I was censored multiple times by a teacher. Anything a student might want to distribute required administration aproval, and they never approved anything except for student elections.), free expression (although not me, where of straight black was strictly prohibited), and even free assembly (the clubs had to recieve school board approval, and a group that had any sort of semblence of leadership and a cause is considered a club. With out offical sanctions, it would lead to censorship) was restricted.
The interesting thing is the balance and the role of what school systems are supposed to accomplish. Part of that goal is for the school systems to provide political education -- schools are considered the primary source of teaching citizenship and to acclimate them to the social norms of politics. When the school system teaches you by example that repression, although well meaning, is acceptable for one thing, it teaches it is acceptable for other things. If you teach people that repressing one freedom, ie censoring student writings, is acceptable to prevent indecent material from propagating through the school, it is easy to follow that people will think that it is acceptable to supress free speech in the name of "Homeland Security."
It is something that has been debated for a long time -- how much "freedom" do you allow students in High School? Do you suspend the First Amendment while they are in their High School years, restrict them or let them excerise them. My personal feeling as to the reason that they are able to get away with it, is because High School students, generally speaking are unable to effectively fight the system -- they don't have money, and few parents care if Little Jimmy can't write about something or express himself.
Re:Of course they don't know, we don't allow them (Score:5, Informative)
You've got it all wrong. The principal was constitutionally off-base in restricting the speech, as it is the taxpayer who is funding the paper. He was acting as a representative of the government, and the government cannot selectively restrict speech in this way.
Anyone interested in learning more ought to google "NEA first amendment" or something to that effect. The National Endowment of the Arts is the traditional lightning rod for speech restriction by government, since there are so many artists funded by the program who try to be deliberately provocative, and so many hicks responsible for legislating funding for the program. Traditionally the supreme court has found restrictions imposed on the speech of funded artists to be unconstitutional for a few different reasons, although I haven't followed supreme court cases much in the last couple of years, and the federal courts (like the rest of the country) are getting dumber and more conservative...
Re:Of course they don't know, we don't allow them (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, at my high school we were censored as well and our paper was 100% advertising supported.
Then you have the freedom to buy your own presses, publish on your own paper, and distribute you literature off of school grounds. Did your advertisers pay you enough to purchases your own presses? If they didn't, then you were really supported by the school.
OTOH, if they did, then you should have done as I suggested. You would find that the principal couldn't have stopped the activity in this instance.
Re:Not just the first amendment (Score:3, Informative)
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Recognize that? It's the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. That's not an excerpt. That's the whole thing, every word.
The First Amendment is not a declaration. It is a law, a law that prohibits the Congress of the United States from passing certain types of legislation. None of the amendments are declarations. They're laws that help to define the scope and jurisdiction of the power of the federal government.
The Constitution, in Article V, defines the process for amending the Constitution itself. Any part of the Constitution can be amended, as long as the process is followed. Entire chunks of the Constitution as they were ratified in 1789 are now null and void, having been amended in the years since. The first part of Article I section 3, for instance, no longer applies; it's been replaced by the 17th Amendment.
Because the first 10 amendments are part of the Constitution, they, too, can be amended, as described in Article V. If we --as a country --wanted to change the way the First Amendment is worded, we could do that. If we wanted to get rid of it altogether, we could do that too. Because we, the people, make the rules. We are not permanently bound to a document that was written more than two centuries ago. We can change it in any way we see fit.
So that whole "the first 10 articles of the Bill of Rights are NOT amendments" thing is completely wrong. And the "the first amendment can't be altered or abolished" thing is also completely wrong. Not a little bit wrong, not right in substance but wrong in detail. Like completely wrong.
Oh, you're wrong about citizenship, too. It's right there, in black and white, in the 14th Amendment: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. That PDF you linked to is all funny-business, and about as academically rigorous as those manifestos by dim bulbs who claim that they don't really have to pay income taxes because of some obscure technicality of the law that only they understand. It's armchair law from armchair philosophers and deserves no consideration whatsoever.
Re:Accuracy (Score:2, Informative)
Anyway, I think teachers get paid enough. The reason we have so many crappy teachers is that the crappy ones are not removed. Everyoen knows who the crappy teachers are in each school, but the administration hires the teacher that makes their life the easiest (also coaches, probably will be quiet and not complain). Instead, the administrators need to have some sort of reason to hire good teachers. I am probably the only teacher in favor of testing each and every year. I don't care if the teachers "teach to the test". If the test is written correctly, teaching to the test is exactly what should happen.
Fire the teachers whose students don't learn anything over the course of 1 year. In order to do this, you have to test each and every student each year. FIRE THEM ALL if you have to.
Sorry about that, I am no longer teaching. The system just disgusted me.
Re:Regarding flag burning (Score:3, Informative)
And that makes it easier to see what the real motives behind legislation like that are - it's an argument supposed to make people think and realize that the FUD spread is just that. FUD.
Re:Of course they don't know, we don't allow them (Score:5, Informative)
A principal does have a competing duty to maintain discipline. The guideline in Hazelwood is that censorship may occur only to prevent "material and substantial disruption".
Instead of sponsored speech, you may be thinking of commercial speech, which is its own legal world. High school newspapers are, AFAIK, supposed to encourage journalism, not public relations.
Re:Accuracy (Score:4, Informative)
Let's try to inject some accuracy into your comments...
Certainly many elected officials, and their appointees, have hidden agendas. Their public agenda is, presumably, why people voted for them. But to dismiss public schools because of this belies a deep misunderstanding of the advantages of a public school system. A public school system is, by necessity, open to scrutiny by the entire community. Private schools are not.
The only case I've read about this is about a techer who was using the consitution in a Cupertino, CA public school to argue that the "Founding Fathers" intended the U.S. to be a Christian nation. Some conservative press misrepresented this as a case of "banning the constitution" in the school.
I attribute the decline in the U.S. primary education system to the following ills:
Re:Accuracy (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Accuracy (Score:3, Informative)
But isn't that about the same time they were having record wheat harvests?
Re:2nd Amendment (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Of course they don't know, we don't allow them (Score:3, Informative)
I was wrong. The american educational system actively discourages personal expression, at least the part I was put through in So. California. I would not send my kids to be suppressed there.
Re:The 60s are dead. (Score:3, Informative)
Pretty much. There's no convincing suburban WASP kids born of suburban WASP parents that there's anything other than god and country.
Re:Accuracy (Score:2, Informative)
No, it was a wrong translation and shows the demonization of the USSR. The more correct translation is: "We plan to attend your funeral.".
Re:Regarding flag burning (Score:1, Informative)
The worldwide interpretation of "Liberalism" is the that the government should not control either the economy or the people. It is based on the theories of Hobbes and Locke. "Neoliberalism" is this idea taken to its extreme (i.e. Libertarianism). For some reason, the USA uses different terms, however.
From Wikipedia:
Re:Accuracy (Score:5, Informative)
In the 1980s literacy across India was hovering at around 30%, in Kerela it was closer to 90%.
Numbers for child mortality and life expectency have been similarly impressive.
What I Learned from Sports (Score:3, Informative)
Everything I need to know I learned from sports.
I learned that the bigger you are, the more likely you are to beat the shit out of smaller people. As a smaller person, I learned the faster you are, the more likely you are to avoid a beating. As a slower person, I learned I was fucked no matter what I did.
I learned the better you were at useless activities (usually pushing a spherioid through some sort of goal) the more likely you were to get laid. Corollary: I learned how to cope with blue balls.
I learned about teamwork. It takes a team to truly humiliate the weakest player.
I learned about the political system. Important players didn't need to work to get good grades. Not-so-important players (say, those on the bench-warming team) better bust their asses.
I learned about loyalty. Admiring anything about the other team that wasn't a cheerleader leads to certain pain.
You can learn a lot about the real world from sports.
The most important thing I learned: the head of our basketball team in highschool is now the manager of a gas station. At 37.
Re:Accuracy (Score:1, Informative)
Agreed. It wasn't a joke; it was a mistranslation.
A brief exerpt from the prefix of http://www.slavica.com/trc/trc_preface.html/ [slavica.com], "The Russian Context: The Culture Behind The Language" (emphasis added):
Re:In related findings... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Regarding flag burning (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. Some years back, in the late 1970's, there was a fun court case in Chicago. A theatre group produced a play in which an American flag was burned as part of one scene. The actors involved were arrested.
When they got to court, their defense was simple: They produced the oficial rules for handling flags, and pointed out that flags are supposed to be destroyed by burning. Their flags had come from local organizations such as the VFW. They had sent these organizations the script, and asked for worn-out flags that they could use (and burn) in the play. It seems that all these organizations had discussed the request, and decided that this was in fact a proper (if unusual) way to dispose of the flags. The play itself wasn't "disrespectful"; it merely had fictional characters that were disrespectful of the flag.
I only read the first reports, including the fact that the judge thought it was all pretty silly and tossed out the case. There were, however, lots of offended "patriots", and there was some sort of appeal. I never read what happened in the appeals.
But it is fun to mention to people that burning is the officially-approved way to dispose of old flags, and watch their confusion. After all, would you want someone to just toss a flag in the trash?
Also, how do used-car dealers dispose of their old flags?
[OT] Re:Accuracy (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Of course... (Score:3, Informative)
As per your definition of sovereign country I'd very interested in finding out what it is. Because nowhere in the Oxford English dictionary does it mention that a nation to be sovereign has to be a democracy. In fact the word sovereign derives from monarchy which is by definition a dictatorship....
As dealing with complexity, well... I must tell you that I so happen to be a veteran (yup from one of them Eurowussie countries) and I happened to see actual fire action in the former Yugoslavia. So spare me the "complexities" and the "moral obligations" that were so "imperative" which you blisfuly ignore, but I must trust you they were imperative, right?
As per the official count, again funny how the Pentagon has said many times that they were not conducting official body counts. How can you cite an "official" count that does not exist as proof of anything?
The fact still remains, your government decided to invade a sovereign country based on a claim that has proven to be false. Thus the thousands of civilians killed are indeed a result of a criminal endeavour. You can sit down and masturbate to your self righteous Bushista propaganda all you want, still it does not change the fact that you are indeed supporting a criminal enterprise. Just because Saddam was a bad person does not give you nor your ilk the right to invade another country on false premises and nonexistant threats. Why? Because that makes you the aggressor... try to dress it up as "freedom" or "dancing happy shinny people" who can now vote because a muslim cleric faced Bush who was the least interested in helding these elections. So please spare me the crappola... it is always interesting to see the degree of delusion some of you are employing. The koolaid is indeed far more powerful than we anticipated.
Not Flamebait - Mod Up! (Score:4, Informative)
Such criticism is legit, nowhere does parent say 'America is teh Devil'. The fact is we intervened in South and Central America in order to stop socialists/communists from coming to power by democratic means. Whether or not that this was a good thing is debatable, but either way it_happened.
Re:Of course... (Score:3, Informative)
But in any case, just so you can enjoy your Kool Aid, I will refer you to the following historical precedent:
"United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting. According to reports from Saigon, 83 percent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong. A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam."
- Peter Grose, in a page 2 New York Times article titled 'U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote,' September 4, 1967.
That happened a few months before the Tet offensive, I am aware that you may not even know what that is. But enjoy....
Once you grow up you may understand that you can not bomb a sovereign nation into democracy. Cheers... and yes Iraq was a sovereign country.
Re:Accuracy (Score:3, Informative)
Re:and don't forget (Score:1, Informative)
Re:and don't forget (Score:1, Informative)
The review was written by William Podmore; the book by George Crile.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/08711385
Randy
"
Crile, a producer for the US news programme `60 Minutes', has written a hymn of praise for the CIA and its terrorist operation in Afghanistan. He also idolises Congressman Charlie Wilson, a good ol' Texan, a coke-snorting, whisky-guzzling, whoring, arms-dealing, freeloading, hit-and-run drunk-driver, who constantly broke US laws to arrange aid for the terrorist cause.
Crile ignores the fact that the US intervened first in Afghanistan, supporting reactionary terrorists trying to overthrow the progressive government: on 3 July 1979, President Carter signed a secret directive authorising covert aid to the mujehadin. The CIA promoted drug trafficking to raise funds for them. The British, French and Israeli governments all sold arms to them. Only in December 1979, five months after the US intervention, did Soviet troops enter Afghanistan, at the Afghan government's request, to defend the people against the terrorist onslaught.
The CIA, assisted by Thatcher, spent $1 billion a year arming and training more than 300,000 Islamic mercenaries drawn from around the world to fight against Afghani national liberation. Crile tells us that MI6 did much of the CIA's dirty work, `murder, assassination, and indiscriminate bombings'. It was the CIA's biggest operation, far bigger than their terrorist Contra operation in Nicaragua, indeed the biggest secret war ever.
The CIA-organised Contras targeted schools, clinics and hospitals: so did the mujehadin, and more so. The Contras "raped, tortured and killed unarmed civilians, including children" and "groups of civilians, including women and children, were burned, dismembered, blinded and beheaded", as the CIA told a Congressional Intelligence Committee. So did the mujehadin, and more so. The CIA's special favourite was the repellent criminal and fascist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who was "responsible for the practice of throwing acid in the faces of Afghan women who failed to cover themselves properly".
In the end, Gorbachev withdrew the Soviet forces from Afghanistan, and the mujehadin proceeded to wreck Afghanistan and attack their sponsor the USA. Crile claims that the withdrawal destroyed the Soviet Union. Not so; as Castro said, "Imperialism could not have destroyed the Soviet Union if the Soviets had not destroyed it first."
"
Re:Accuracy (Score:3, Informative)
While there never was a missile gap, there was always a big conventional forces gap. Maybe (probably?) the higher technology of the West would have overcome the numerical advantages of the Soviets - but that didn't work too well for the Nazis. Just because the Dutch tried to cling onto their empire after WWII hardly disproves that there was a Soviet threat. In fact, given the fears that Indonesia might become Communist, Dutch actions there might even have been conceived as part of the same struggle - that's just supposition on my part though.
Re:Accuracy (Score:3, Informative)
The original phrase, as Khruschev said it, was "We will show you Kuzka's mother", what in Russian is a mildly rude version of "We will show you!", and definietly was meant to be applied to competition in economy. At the same time, same Khrushchev promoted a slogan "Catch up and Overtake the US", that was also used, in an abbreviated form, as trademark used for some industrial equipment.
Admitting that there is a lot of "catching up" to do was pretty far from arrogance and aggressiveness that US propaganda attributed to Communists in 60's-80's.
Re:Accuracy (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Accuracy (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Accuracy (Score:3, Informative)
Dear coward,
Islamic terrorists are very little threat to the U.S.A. The entire history of Islamic terrorism has so far managed to kill about as many people as die every week in car crashes. It is more likely that you will be struck by lightning and then die in a plane crash than be killed by a terrorist act.
The so called terrorists are just radical militants. Their are plenty of every religion, especially christian. Islam is a traditionally peaceful religion, with less of a history of forced conversions than christianity which wiped out entire cultures in the process of enslaving and converting them. The religion does stress submission to the authority of the church more so than the christian religion, but both are pretty strict about it.
The majority of the people in Iraq could not care less about our freedom or anything else about us up until a few years ago. Now many of them hate us, but probably because we blew up a lot of their country and killed thousands of them, then put a dictator in charge of their country, emptied all their government funds into the pockets of various governments and corporations, took out a large loan on their behalf, and then divided that up. We raped their people in prisons, tortured them, beat them in the streets, murdered them on camera, and built a giant wall in the middle of their largest city and filled it with Americans an foreigners. These people now legally own everything in the country and go out surrounded by armed guards to order their "workers."
If their are people who hate the U.S. enough to die in a fiery explosion to hurt us, we have only ourselves to blame. We did everything possible to goad them into it.
If you want to see some scary radicals how about looking at the KKK, or the Michigan Militia. They have killed more Americans than anyone else and are much more likely to kill you. The threat from the Islamic "terrorists" is hugely overblown although we are doing our best to make it real. Right now they are just a scape goat and a reason why you have to give up all your rights, which will somehow, magically, make you safe.