Reply #7: Free expression is the right to say anything [View All]

[Igel]

you damned well please when you want to say it, and the government has nothing to say about it. It also implies that since you're free not to speak, your words are your responsibility.

It's a sort of ideal. It's constrained by how you rank other rights, since they all have to fit together in some predictable way. Preserving one right might require limiting another's application in a given situation. Exactly where these rights pick up and leave off can be messy, and slippery slopes abound, tempered only by sanity and common sense.

I clearly have a right not to be attacked, or to have somebody intentionally mislead into dangerous situations. I clearly have a right to speak my mind, and engage in potentially repugnant speech: to defend a woman's right to an abortion is repugnant to some. Saying "Allahu akbar" is repugnant to others, as is "Christ is King" or "God is dead". Do I have a right not to have certain words uttered in my presence, or for my eyes to be spared a certain image if the only reason is to prevent my being offended? There are harder debates, of course: Should I be able to raise my child with the moral sense I find appropriate, or should sex acts and wanton violence be shown in movies and on tv? My wife didn't mind some portions of tv shows and movies until she became a mother; suddenly she stopped worrying about the broadcasters' rights and focused on child rearing. The courts face the same tussle: creating a reasonable society for raising kids is in society's interests, since those kids will be adults fairly soon.

We typically place freedom of speech below physical violence, and above freedom from offence. We have traditionally valued tolerance, and spirited debate: as I've said before, if we're free from offence, we're also free from demonstrating tolerance, and free from diversity of opinion. It's gotten a bit fuzzy when race or sexual orientation is placed in a privileged position, because those are Topics that Must Not Be Named, for various reasons.

At the same time, since we have a right not to speak, we can also show civility and if not respect, at least courtesy. Few need to show sex acts on tv or in movies, to call out racially charged epithets, or to say "Christ is King" in a room full of Jews or Muslims, or "Allah is greatest" in a room full of Xians. And a backlash is appropriate if gratuituous incivility is shown.