Post #3: Eight Values of Free Expression

 Eight Values of Free Expression

by Davis Trax

The value of free expression that resonates the most with me was pretty clear early on into reading this. I saw promoting tolerance and thought about how tolerant we have been in society towards people who express strong opinions and how I've learned to be tolerant towards others when thinking about if I was in their situation, but I didn't think it would be able to beat how I feel about this one.

The third value mentioned, titled "Stable Change" says, in a personal sum-up, that we should be given a place where we can freely express anger or sadness and that because of this, we will be able to steer clear of resorting to violent actions in order to resolve our own personal issues. I agree with this, having personal leverage in this mindset, but it does need one limitation.

I have spent years coping with anger by talking about it out loud to myself. Whenever I am alone in my room or in my house, I am able to conjure up my words and formulate my thoughts out loud so I can better understand how I need to approach the situation and how to better myself from it. It is the most effective thing I have ever done to help coordinate my mentality on certain matters and if I hadn't, I may have not had the same quick resolution to the problem.

I know that I am not alone in this because many other people and even celebrities do the same thing. But instead of talking out loud to themselves, they resort to a more public setting.

Twitter can be such a great way for famous people to connect more with their fans by posting tweets throughout the day of what they are doing and why they're doing it and all sorts of other things, but it can also be the grounds for some pretty strong opinions that they can put forth. They use it as ground for argumentation. Lately, all they do is post their opinions and then news sources write lengthy articles on their own interpretation of the tweets that could totally misread the persons thoughts.

My final verdict is: Yes, there needs to be a place where people can go and vent and be expressive, but it needs to be controlled and it needs to be private. There is no need for random people to have to see problems celebrities are facing on Twitter and there needs to be room for people to move around and flail about if they're that upset about it. If there is a way we can implement a place where people can safely offer their emotions up to their problems in a safe, private setting, then I support it so much.

We can offer so much more to ourselves and society when we are able to think rationally about our choices and the best way to do that is by getting all of the emotion out of it prior to taking it more public and seeking out help from others. 

Post #2: History of the Supreme Court

History of the Supreme Court

By Davis Trax

One thing that I learned that I didn't previously know was that John Marshall basically created and established Judicial Review in the case of Madison v Marbury in 1803. Judicial Review is so important to the checks and balances of the judicial branch, and I was glad to learn more about it's creation.

Personally, I think the biggest takeaway from this article was learning who our current Supreme Court justices are because after the unfortunate passing of Ruth Bader Ginsberg, I wasn't actually aware of who ended up joining the Supreme Court afterwards.

The most surprising thing that I learned was in the early days of the Supreme Court and the Judiciary Act of 1789. More importantly, I didn't realize that originally, there were only six judges and that they didn't hear any cases within their first term. I am glad they were able to change the number of justices to nine. It should've at least been an odd number so that there would never be a three-way tie.

The video and the History post definitely changed my viewpoint on the Supreme Court and the judicial branch as a whole. Personally, I think their checks and balances are the best out of all of the branches, so I definitely think the Supreme Court is cooler than I thought. I just think it is amazing that we hear so much about our President because of the affairs he deals with, and so without any other knowledge, people can assume Biden is the leader of the nation. He isn't. He has equal power with the judicial and legislative branch. He can't do any unconstitutional without getting exposed by the Supreme Court and he can't give and Executive Order without the judicial branch reviewing it. I just think that is pretty badass of the judicial branch.