Stage 3: First Amendment vs. Stolen Valor Act

How far will the government go when supporting the first amendment? While searching The Dallas Morning News, I came across an interesting article called When Freedom of Speech, Lies Collide by Tom Robberson. He was bringing up an issue focused towards the first amendment and the Stolen Valor Act. Now, I know you are probably wondering what I mean considering you haven’t glanced at the article quite yet, but basically what was bothering Mr. Robberson was that there were cases of people lying about being in the military service and when they got arrested for their untruthful lies, they got out of all possible fines and charges because the first amendment allowed free speech.

Now, Mr. Robberson has a good point, however I could be siding with his opinion because of his writing techniques used to persuade his audience. First of all, a main point to notice right off of the bat of this article is Mr. Robberson only gives two examples of people lying about their alleged military service and getting away with it. The way he generalizes his statements makes the reader possibly believe that many more cases are out occurring in the US, but from this article we are not given any information of that sort. The next thing I believe is important to point out in the article is the way Mr. Robberson uses pathos continually throughout his piece. The very first person he brings up lied about being a 9/11 victim. This is a very sensitive subject to many Americans and therefore would push people to feel angry about someone lying about being a survivor in 9/11 when possibly someone’s family member could’ve been a real survivor or died in the 9/11 attack. With bringing up an event such as 9/11, Mr. Robberson is appealing highly to the audience's emotions so that they will take his side. The next example Mr. Robberson used was a man who lied about being in the military to get ahead in his career. The writer once again used pathos by bringing up the active-duty service members and veterans. He said that by Rick Strandlof (the man who lied about being in the military) lying, he was actually hurting the veterans and active-duty service members. Overall, the article was well written and very persuasive because of all of the pathos throughout the article.