In class today, I wanted to take a Constitutional standpoint regarding whether or not someone has a right to not wear a mask. Since masks are a clothing accessory, whether surgical or not, it can be interpreted as freedom of speech to wear (or not wear) what you want. However, we have seen the Supreme Court already argue against several types of free speech, such as obscenity, which prohibits public nudity for instance, but most importantly, they have ruled against incitement to public danger. This comes from the landmark case, Schenck v. United States, where it was said that speech that leads to a "clear and present danger" was subject to restriction, such as yelling fire in a crowded movie theater. In terms of mask wearing, I believe this falls under this precedent because not wearing a mask facilitates the COVID-19 pandemic, further endangering public health, and thus being a "clear and present danger." Therefore, people cannot simply claim that they have the right to not wear a mask as freedom of speech. Also, for a broader viewpoint, we live in this country under a social contract where we agreed to give up some liberties in order to secure our rights: the most essential being a right to life. A person not wearing a mask in public threatens the lives of other people, considering how fast this disease can spread and how fatal it can be. Consequently, not wearing a mask cannot be neither a right to liberty nor a right to free speech.
Lastly, I have been wanting to post this clip for a while, but I feel it is fitting now. As Allen mentioned, as citizens we must be able to foresee the future in order to tell whether or not we are content with the path we are heading as a society because "the very course of human events depends on it" (104). This clip from the show Newsroom is authentic to our state of affairs yet also inspiring to continue to fight for what we believe in in order to steer this country into the direction we want it to go.
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