~First Amendment~
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
~You~
"Free Speech is basically the right to say what you wish, so long as it doesn't offend"
Where's the doesn't offend clause in the first amendment? The courts have (twice) ruled that speech that demonstrates a 'clear and present danger' can be grounds for a conviction. But you have gone a step farther, branching into the world of offenses.
In Miller V California it was ruled "if it [some displayed material i.e television show] would be found appealing to the prurient interest by an average person applying contemporary community standards, depicts sexual conduct in a patently offensive way and has no serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value." Basically if it's offensive yet doesn't add anything to the community in a significant way it can be censored.
You're whole argument is contradictory in that you say, so long as it doesn't offend you're free to say whatever you want, that's FAR more conservative than what the court has ruled to allowed to be censored (you failed to mention any exceptions to that rule such as artistic political or scientific value). Under the first true sentence of your argument, what I'm hesitant to call your thesis, speech would be inhibited in such an unbelievable way. You think Charles Darwin's papers would have been published with the "so long as it doesn't offend" clause attached to freedom of speech, of course not. Catholics would never have allowed it. Do you think any political comedians would exist, how bout ANY form of race joke (i.e Carlos Mencia). No. How about anything depicting homosexuality in anyway shape or form on T.V. Keep dreaming.
Essentially you're calling the American youth pussies for allowing something YOU support outright and from your language WANT to push a step farther. So YOU my friend, are the pussy, YOU are supporting more censorship than already takes place at this point in time. It is really necessary for that whole argument to be restructured for it to have any validity.
Seeing as I am for a lack of censorship in any form it's kinda gross how uneducated someone can be on a subject, and rather than simply googling some of the controversy of the first amendment and clicking on wikipedia, they outright spew incorrect information. And if you're going to blame something blame the courts not the FCC, if the supreme court ruled it unconstitutional for any censorship to take place on television the FCC (in theory) couldn't enforce it. Come on man.
Keshicus
You're absolutely right about censorship in america, the problem is that people make a choice to actually bitch about freedom of speech (i.e. swearing and other offensives) and start flinging lawsuits left and right. It becomes a big mess because we have bunch of fuckballs with thumbs up their asses going anal about words because they want to make a "significant difference." In a way its a scam for the FCC to make money and make stupid people feel better about themselves.
If people get offended from what I say I tell them if they don't like it, lick it.