|
Censorship In The United States
In the United States, censorship involves the suppression of speech or public communication and raises issues of freedom of speech, which is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Interpretation of this fundamental freedom has varied since its enshrinement. Traditionally, the First Amendment was regarded as applying only to the Federal government, leaving the states and local communities free to censor or not. As the applicability of states' rights in lawmaking vis-a-vis citizens' national rights began to wane in the wake of the Civil War, censorship by any level of government eventually came under scrutiny, but not without resistance. For example, in recent decades, censorial restraints increased during the 1950s period of widespread anti-communist sentiment, as exemplified by the hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. In '' Miller v. California'' (1973), the U.S. Supreme Court found that the First Amendment's freedom of spe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slippery Slope
In a slippery slope argument, a course of action is rejected because the slippery slope advocate believes it will lead to a chain reaction resulting in an undesirable end or ends. The core of the slippery slope argument is that a specific decision under debate is likely to result in unintended consequences. The strength of such an argument depends on whether the small step really is likely to lead to the effect. This is quantified in terms of what is known as the Warrant (rhetoric), warrant (in this case, a demonstration of the process that leads to the significant effect). This type of argument is sometimes used as a form of fearmongering in which the probable consequences of a given action are exaggerated in an attempt to scare the audience. When the initial step is not demonstrably likely to result in the claimed effects, this is called the slippery slope fallacy. This is a type of informal fallacy, and is a subset of continuum fallacy, in that it ignores the possibility of mi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Peter Zenger
John Peter Zenger (October 26, 1697 – July 28, 1746) was a German printer and journalist in New York City. Zenger printed ''The New York Weekly Journal''. He was accused of Defamation, libel in 1734 by William Cosby, the royal governor of Province of New York, New York, but the jury acquitted Zenger, who became a symbol for freedom of the press. In 1733, Zenger began printing ''The New York Weekly Journal'', which voiced opinions critical of the colonial governor, William Cosby. On November 17, 1734, on Cosby's orders, the sheriff arrested Zenger. After a grand jury refused to indict him, the Attorney General Richard Bradley charged him with libel in August 1735. Zenger's lawyers, Andrew Hamilton (lawyer), Andrew Hamilton and William Smith (judge, born 1697), William Smith, Sr., successfully argued that truth is a defense (legal), defense against charges of libel. Early life Peter Zenger was born in 1697 in the Palatinate (region), German Palatinate. Most of the details of hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Merrymount (Quincy, Massachusetts)
Merrymount is a primarily residential neighborhood of Quincy, Massachusetts, USA, located between the neighborhoods of Quincy Center and Adams Shore. Although it was the site of Quincy's initial settlement, Merrymount was not substantially developed for residential use until the first half of the 20th century, and most of the neighborhood's houses date from that period. History Merrymount takes its name from the colony of Mare Mount, also known as Merry Mount or Merrymount. Colonist Thomas Morton wrote that the natives called the area "Passonagessit" and that the inhabitants translated this to "ma-re mount". The colony, established in 1625, was officially named Mount Wollaston by the Puritan separatists, but as Morton and other non-Puritans gained influence in the area, the name Merry Mount gained common use. In 1627, Morton and others erected a maypole and conducted a May Day Revel, inviting both colonists and natives. William Bradford indicated that Morton and other Englis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Morton (colonist)
Thomas Morton (c. 1579–1647) was an early colonist in North America from Devon, England. He was a lawyer, writer, and social reformer known for studying American Indian culture, and he founded the colony of Merrymount, located in Quincy, Massachusetts. He is the author of ''New English Canaan,'' an anti-Puritan work which could be considered the first book banned in the United States, as it was banned by the Puritans in colonial times. Biography Mount Wollaston Morton took a three-month exploratory trip to America in 1622, but was back in England by early 1623 complaining of intolerance among ruling elements of the Puritan community. He returned in 1624 as a senior partner in a Crown-sponsored trading venture aboard the ship ''Unity'' with his associate Captain Wollaston and 30 indentured young men. They began trading for furs on a spit of land belonging to the Algonquian tribes. Morton immediately began selling liquor and firearms to the Indians, disregarding the laws ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Bradford (Plymouth Colony Governor)
William Bradford ( 19 March 15909 May 1657) was an English Puritan English Dissenters, Separatist originally from the West Riding of Yorkshire in Northern England. He moved to Leiden in the Dutch Republic in order to escape persecution from James VI and I, King James I of England, and then emigrated to the Plymouth Colony on the ''Mayflower'' in 1620. He was a signatory to the Mayflower Compact and went on to serve as Governor of the Plymouth Colony intermittently for about 30 years between 1621 and 1657. He served as a commissioner of the New England Confederation, United Colonies of New England on multiple occasions and served twice as president. His journal ''Of Plymouth Plantation'' covered the years from 1620 to 1646 in Plymouth. ''The fast and thanksgiving days of New England'' by Will ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plymouth, Massachusetts
Plymouth ( ; historically also spelled as Plimouth and Plimoth) is a town in and the county seat of Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States. Located in Greater Boston, the town holds a place of great prominence in American history, folklore, and culture, and is known as "America's Hometown". Plymouth was the site of the colony founded in 1620 by the ''Mayflower'' Pilgrims (Plymouth Colony), Pilgrims, where New England was first established. It is the oldest municipality in New England and one of the oldest in the United States. The town has served as the location of several prominent events, one of the more notable being the Thanksgiving (United States)#Harvest festival observed by the Pilgrims at Plymouth, First Thanksgiving feast. Plymouth served as the capital of Plymouth Colony from its founding in 1620 until the colony's merger with the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1691. The English explorer John Smith (explorer), John Smith named the area Plymouth (after the city in Sou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mayflower
''Mayflower'' was an English sailing ship that transported a group of English families, known today as the Pilgrims, from England to the New World in 1620. After 10 weeks at sea, ''Mayflower'', with 102 passengers and a crew of about 30, reached what is today the United States, dropping anchor near the tip of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, on , 1620. Differing from their contemporary Puritans (who sought to reform and purify the Church of England), the Pilgrims chose to separate themselves from the Church of England, which forced them to pray in private. They believed that its resistance to reform and Roman Catholic past left it beyond redemption. Starting in 1608, a group of English families left England for the Netherlands, where they could worship freely. By 1620, the community determined to cross the Atlantic for America, which they considered a "new Promised Land", where they would establish Plymouth Colony. The Pilgrims had originally hoped to reach America by early October ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
British America
British America collectively refers to various British colonization of the Americas, colonies of Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain and its predecessors states in the Americas prior to the conclusion of the American Revolutionary War in 1783. The British monarchy of the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland—later named the Kingdom of Great Britain, of the British Isles and Western Europe—governed many colonies in the Americas beginning in 1585. From 1607, numerous permanent English settlements were made, ultimately reaching from Hudson Bay, to the Mississippi River and the Caribbean Sea. Much of these territories were occupied by Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous peoples, whose populations declined due to Epidemic, epidemics, wars, and massacres. In the Atlantic slave trade, England and other European empires shipped Africans to the Americas for labor in their colonies. Slavery became essential to colonial production, as on Barbados, Jamaica, and oth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Communications Media
Means of communication or media are used by people to communicate and exchange information with each other as an information sender and a receiver. General information Many different materials are used in communication. Maps, for example, save tedious explanations on how to get to a destination. A means of communication is therefore a means to an end to make communication between people easier, more understandable and, above all, clearer. In everyday language, the term ''means of communication'' is often equated with the ''medium''. However, the term "medium" is used in media studies to refer to a large number of concepts, some of which do not correspond to everyday usage. Means of communication are used for communication between sender and recipient and thus for the transmission of information. Elements of communication include a communication-triggering event, sender and recipient, a ''means of communication'', a ''path of communication'' and ''contents of communication''. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
United States Defamation Law
The origins of the United States' defamation laws pre-date the American Revolution; one influential case in 1734 involved John Peter Zenger and established precedent that "The Truth" is an absolute defense against charges of libel. Though the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect freedom of the press, for most of the history of the United States, the U.S. Supreme Court failed to use it to rule on libel cases. This left libel laws, based upon the traditional "Common Law" of defamation inherited from the English legal system, mixed across the states. The 1964 case '' New York Times Co. v. Sullivan'', however, radically changed the nature of libel law in the United States by establishing that public officials could win a suit for libel only when they could prove the media outlet in question knew either that the information was wholly and patently false or that it was published "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not". Later Supreme Court ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Obscenity
An obscenity is any utterance or act that strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time. It is derived from the Latin , , "boding ill; disgusting; indecent", of uncertain etymology. Generally, the term can be used to indicate strong moral repugnance and outrage in expressions such as "obscene profit (accounting), profits" and "the obscenity of war". As a legal term, it usually refers to descriptions and depictions of people engaged in Human sexuality, sexual and excretory activity. United States obscenity law In the United States, issues of obscenity raise issues of limitations on the freedom of speech and of freedom of the press, the press, which are otherwise protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Federal obscenity law in the U.S. is unusual in that there is no uniform national standard. Former Justice Potter Stewart of the Supreme Court of the United States, in attempting to classify what materi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
