freedom of speech and press is a good thing

Freedom of speech and press is marvelous. Regardless of belief system, every U.S. citizen should be grateful and zealously defensive of it. Please heed the following corrections of some all-too-common misconceptions.

• Having moral standards and respectfully expressing them is in no way "oppressing" other people, nor "inflicting" alternative points of view on the general populace. A free exchange of ideas is a benefit, not a burden. To parrot some popular clichés, "if you don't want to see it, don't watch" and "if you don't want to hear it, don't listen". Parodying and general mockery of differing ideas and media are fully permitted, of course (postmodernists hardly have any other tactic to employ), but have the reprehensible tendencies to emphasize societal division and antagonize the believers of what is mocked.
  
• Having moral standards about speech or press and respectfully expressing them is not detrimental to the freedoms thereof. The respectful expression of a moral standard for speech does not include forcibly silencing immoral speakers. Obviously, it also does not include attacks, sabotage, harassment, etc. It does include whatever means are lawful and respectful. These might be raising awareness of the immoral speech, encouraging the personal choice to avoid it, refusing to support it economically, even participating in peaceful demonstrations. The same freedoms a speaker uses to spread a message can be used by other speakers to protest the spreading of that message. The point is that all the speakers can speak; none of them may prohibit the speech of the others.
  
• It isn't contradictory for someone to believe in freedom of speech while having definite limits on what speech is acceptable to him or her. In fact, the existence of speech someone disagrees with is more or less guaranteed. People who would be generally considered as extremely permissive (and/or apathetic) about speech will nevertheless tell you that some speech or media wouldn't be around in an ideal world: at the very least, the speech or media which communicate the wrong viewpoints, as judged by him or her, and at the very most, any speech or media which have a cumulative negative effect on the audience, again as judged by him or her. Speech is a human activity. Therefore, it is possibly subject to moral consideration. Freedom of speech denotes freedom from interference in communication. As always, freedom doesn't include absolute "release" from all restrictions.
  
• Freedom of speech has come to be valued for serving many different purposes. One is the frequently-well-earned criticism of government actions and officials. Another is the frank investigation of important yet taboo topics, in the proper context. A third is the nonviolent collision of disparate belief systems. To the individualistic modernized consumer, freedom of speech allows the exaltation and exposure of the central ego, whose nurture and actualization is the goal of existence. Moral standards for speech don't, and shouldn't, stop the achievement of these purposes.