The trouble with freedom of speech is that it is indelibly linked to the freedom to misinterpret, especially with sound bytes and slogans. For example, a common bumper sticker implores readers to "Take America Back." At first glance who could argue? Are there any middle class working Americans who don't feel like America has slipped through their fingers and into the wrong hands?

I sure felt like cheering the other day when a pickup passed bearing that slogan and a couple of decals of the American flag on its tailgate. But then my wife asked me, "Take America back from whom?"

Good question. I wanted to say take it back from the 1 percent who are widening the gap over the rest of us. I wanted to say take it back from the Washington establishment where lobbyists for big business and special interests far outnumber the elected officials sent there to represent us. I wanted to say take America back from the good-old-boys on Wall Street, that bunch of untouchables that the middle class has bailed out financially but who really should be begging to be bailed out of jail since the working class lost jobs and homes and savings due to their shenanigans. I wanted to say take it back from the greedy profiteers willing to sacrifice the health and environment of future generations for riches today, or from the war hawks who would put American lives at risk for political posturing or other faulty and fraudulent causes.

I really wanted to tell my wife that the bumper sticker was right, that we need to take back America from politicians so entrenched in their parties that they are willing to do what's wrong for the country just to do right for their candidate or cause, that we need to take it back from the gas companies and people who don't have to drive to work (reading bumper stickers along the way) because they stay at home and manipulate money and markets to suit their needs, or rather their massive wants.

Those were the answers I wanted to give, but then I realized that the person who pasted that motto onto that tailgate might not have meant any of those things, might even have meant the opposite. That was my wife's point, of course. In practicing his First Amendment rights by displaying his opinion, the driver of that truck gave me the right to misinterpret and exercise my own First Amendment rights as the writer of this opinion column.

In fact there is a good chance that the driver of that patriotic pickup was telling the rest of us to take America back from people like me, people whose patriotism is displayed in a different way, people who are not supportive of a system that pampers corporations and panders to big money. Maybe the owner of that bumper sticker is a lover of the slogan "Drill, baby, drill!" and a hater of ecologists he believes to be ruining the economy. Or maybe the guy is one of those slogan slingers who wants America taken back from a bunch of liberal fanatics who want the government to do everything for them. Or perhaps the call to take America back was really a protest over Obamacare. Possibly it was an anti-union statement from one of those who believes the unions have usurped the country, or maybe it was simply a nostalgic and unintentionally ironic wish to go back to the good old days when people were hesitant to exercise free speech, knew their places, and kept them. Or maybe the comment was more nefarious, possibly racial; maybe it was asking us to take America back from the black man in the oval office or from the Hispanic minorities that are now the majority in some states. There is no way to tell from a bumper sticker.

My wife's question remains: "Take America back from whom?" It's a question that can't be answered in passing or while being passed. Proliferating sound bytes and chanting mottos or slogans has a chilling Orwellian effect, and it gives no answers.

The truth is that there is always more than meets the eye, especially with a mere motto or slogan. And the only way to learn what's beneath the proverbial tip of the iceberg is to exercise the First Amendment further, in an in-depth manner that the founding fathers surely must have intended. Otherwise there is no way to know if a slogan like "Take America Back" means what it says or if it really means, "Take America Backwards."

Mike Ruskovich is a resident of Blanchard.