Banning Ads- NOT Okay

While taking an ACT on saturday, I planned to go home and write a blog post on how a 5 hour test should not determine ones future, until I got to the writing portion. The prompt was whether or not the U.S should ban potentially dangerous or harmful products from advertising. I was so intrigued by this prompt, I kept thinking about it long after the test ended. The more I ponder this dilemma, the more I think that the United States should NOT be able to ban these products from advertising. The obvious arguing point is that it is unconstitutional to silence a company from advertising due to the first amendment: freedom of speech. Along the same line of thinking, equal opportunity is a core idea that many of the last century's problems have been boiled down to. If one company can advertise, all should be able to. Although it pains many to hear, these harmful products are some of the most profitable brands in the country. According to yahoo finance, 3 out of the top 5 most profitable brands can be labeled harmful. The article can be found here. Along with being successful, they are usually taxed higher than the average product. The U.S would lose a huge part of their tax revenue if harmful products were banned from advertising, which would lead to lack of sales.  While these points are very easy to come to, this problem has much more to it. Who's decision would it be to label a product dangerous or harmful. Of course there are the obvious ones like tobacco, alcohol, and tanning beds, but it is logical to make an argument for just about any object. If a child steps on a Lego in the dark and needs to go to the ER, will Toys' R' Us be forced to stop advertising? How about if someone has a deathly peanut allergy, will the peanut with the monocle cease to be seen? Both of these seemingly harmful brands could be forced to stop advertising if the U.S began to ban companies from releasing ads. Even banning just a few products could lead this country down a slippery slope. The U.S cannot ban harmful products from advertising, no matter how many people disagree with the morals of the brand/company.

Fantasy People

While sitting at lunch today, like any tuesday, the conversation switched to the previous night's Monday Night Football Game, which inevitably then changed to fantasy football. For those who don't know what fantasy football is, it's an online league one does with a group of people (8-12 usually) in which you draft NFL players to your team, and however well they do in real life, is how many points they earn in fantasy. The goal is to get the most points each week. Of the twelve or so people at the lunch table, only my friend Carl doesn't have a team. He turned to me, while the rest of the table was in deep discussion about who the most valuable tight-end is, and asked who would be on my fantasy person team. I laughed, thinking he was joking, and then thought about it for a second. After asking 5 or so followup questions like "dead or alive", or "real or fake", Carl and I started talking about who our first pick in this hypothetical draft would be. We spent the next 30 minutes spitting out any name that came to mind, with names ranging from Will Hunting, to Moses, to Dennis Haysbert (The All-State voice). We started asking other people, and received answers such as Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, and Socrates just from people in the American Studies class. After school, I asked some of my family, and got responses such as Jay-Z, Benjamen Franklin, and Zac Brown. It seemed as if there was such a variety in the choice of people, until I thought about how each person embodied a specific characteristic Americans seek. Not one person (so far) has said any war hero, or someone who embodies physical strength. But I thought American history was all about wars? Although we have a history of war, were founded on a revolution, and continue to use our military strength internationally, our "American Dream Team" seems to be made up mostly of artists, activists, and innovators, and. I believe this says something about American people, and not only about what we wish to embody in the people we admire, but also about the people themselves as well. Below is the roster that my interviewees ended up with, along with their reason for being "drafted".  Looks like a pretty good team to me. I still have not come to a conclusion on who my first pick would be, but I hope to soon. I'd love to hear some of your early draft picks in the comment section.

Will Hunting- Intelligence
Moses- Leadership
Dennis Haysbert- Trustworthiness
MLK- Visionary for change
Abraham Lincoln- Honesty and Courage
Socrates- Wisdom
Jay-Z- Multi-talented
Ben Franklin- Innovativeness
Zac Brown- Pure musical talent.

Falsely Patriotic

While patiently waiting for my plane to take off, I began to make light conversation with the passenger sitting next to me. Turns out, he was in basic training at Fort Bragg military base, attempting to become a chemical warfare specialist. He began talking to my mom and me about being deployed to Syria, and when my mom finally interjected, asking whether it was a sure thing that troops would be sent out, he gave her a look that everyone there understood. After that, conversation died down, and all three of us put our earphones in. Per use, I went to a country music playlist, and shuffled my ipod. I couldn't stop thinking about what this man had said. The second song that came on was a song entitled "Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue" by Toby Keith. Keith is widely known as the most patriotic, America-loving artist in current music. Whenever I listened to this song, I would immediately feel more patriotic, and feel "high on America" as my friend Brian put it when he first heard it. For the first time, I didn't feel the same energy from of the song as I usually did, but instead, multiple lyrics bothered me. Lines like "We'll light up your world, like the fourth of July",  referring to how America handles military conduct made me feel almost embarrassed of my country. The lyric that really got to me was: "An' yo'll be sorry that you messed with the U.S. of A. 'Cos well put a boot in your ass, it's the American way". The rest of the lyrics can be found here. This line openly states that if you disagree with America, we'll immediately resort to violence to solve our problems. Of course no one would assume that because Toby Keith says something in a song, those are the political standards the U.S chooses to uphold, but these ideals are what the next generation is hearing every day. After the song finished, many of the lyrics kept echoing in my brian. I realized that although I consider myself to be a fairly patriotic person, I know so little about what is actually going on in Syria: America's biggest current event. The man sitting to my left will be fighting for our country's safety, and the majority of the U.S. won't know any of the root causes of this conflict, including me. When I got home, I did some further studying on the conflict, and realized how little I actually knew. I had no idea the conflict started almost 30 months ago, or that there have been over 100,000 deaths in just over two years.  I also found it crazy that although Obama said that we wouldn't be sending troops over, even someone as low down on the chain of command as my seat mate could say with certainty troops would be on the ground soon enough. It also never clicked for me that this man is in the chemical defense unit, and just under a month ago, a huge chemical attack hit a suburb of Damascus. This was arguably the most deadly attack this conflict has seen yet (BBC), and this kid could be right in the middle of things in less than a year. I recently stumbled upon a syria conflict quiz to test your knowledge that the NY Times put out and I received a 5/12 (rough right?). You can find the quiz by clicking this link. I'd love to hear the score everyone received in the comments section. Although not everyone can meet a soldier on a plane, while coincidently listening to patriotic music in order to enlighten themselves, I highly suggest everyone who reads this and isn't already fluent in this mater decides to study up. I certainly hope the man next to me on the plane will be safe if he is deployed, and I want to thank him for opening my eyes to this conflict.