Eight Values of Free Expression

 What I learned from the eight values of free expression blew my mind. Two of the eight values of free expression really stuck out to me over the others. Promotion of innovation (The seventh value) and Participation in self government (The second value) really stood out to me for good reasons. 

    Promotion of innovation really spoke to me because it promotes the common American to be innovative and change the world. The thought is having a community in which free speech is valued and protected thus creating a more creative, interesting and energized community. With this value the thought is that the citizens will actively fulfill themselves in many interesting and diverse ways. The promotion of innovation obviously directly correlates with freedom of speech. Innovation can come with free speech in many different ways. Just imagine if some of the world's greatest philosophers did not speak their minds because they were afraid of what the government might do if they expressed their true feelings. That is one of the few things that makes certain parts of America great in my opinion is the ability to speak freely. We see this value in action today throughout all of the world because people are constantly publishing articles that have to do with some form of innovation or making the world a better place whether that be innovation of technology, anthropology or agriculture just to name a few examples. We see these ideas throughout all of the web via twitter, blog posts, news articles and many more ways to publish new ideas. Overall from every single app I believe that this value most represents twitter because there is so much innovation being published on twitter almost every day whether that be from billionaires like Elon Musk or just your average Joe. 

    Promotion of innovation is everywhere today. We see it every single day whether that be in books, online or in person. A great source of it that I have seen my entire childhood growing up has to be TedTalks. TedTalk is a great way to promote innovation and just to think that if we did not have the first amendment and the second value of free expression that we may have missed out on so many great thoughts expressed to the world is crazy to me.

    Participation in self government really stood out to me because I never truly realized that the government gets power from the consent of the government. Growing up I always thought that the government got power from the people but this truly made me realize that every action the government signs off on to do is from somebody else in the government not the average American. I do understand why the government does things that way because it makes sense in terms of maybe the citizens would not make wise or the correct choices when it came time to make a decision. The important thing to make sure is that we "the common folk" elect smart politicians so they can make the correct choices that they are afraid we would make.