Freedom of Speech

[baby_mouse]

Freedom of speech has nothing to do with being allowed to say disgusting bigoted things without being called on it.

Freedom of speech is a right granted by governing bodies permitting one to speak, it does not grant you the *right* to stomp your feet and mewl like a puking babe when people disagree with you. You can do that, of course, but supposing you have the "right" to do it is like complaining that you have the "right" to tie your shoelaces in the middle of a busy sidewalk, broadly speaking it's true, but, uh, you're probably going to get bumped into if you're not careful.

People who are imprisoned for publishing information or opinions or who are arrested for expressing themselves publically in a form not reasonably equatable to a breach of the peace, who are in some form or another actually *prevented* from *speaking*, i.e., moving your lips and using your vocal chords or writing down symbols in intelligible sequences in the way that people understand to be language have been subjected to a violation of their freedom of speech.

Saying "You're talking bullshit" to someone who thinks gays should be castrated is not an abrogation of freedom of speech because it leaves the original bigoted spouter of evil nonsense the ability to speak.

Freedom of Speech is a right that citizens must have, a necessity to protect themselves from their government. It does not grant the spouters of fuckwitted garbage the right to feel persecuted if it is pointed out by other ordinary citizens that their heads are on backwards. This is because they are free to turn around and say: "ner ner to you, libtard," or whatever.


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PS - lurking freeps - assaulting someone is similarly NOT an EXPRESSION of your freedom of SPEECH. Speech is about TALKING. With lips and stuff.

[Burning Water]

1. Exactly right.

It amazes me how many people, not just on the right, either, forget this.

You can say any disgusting, bigoted thing you want. You can say any good, noble, progressive ideas you want. You can denigrate President Bush or Jesse Jackson, if you want. The government should not be able to stop you. But people who disagree are free to

1) Do the same to you
2) Ignore you completely like the scum bag they think you are
3) Prepare counter-arguments and criticize your position.

The cure for 'bad' speech is more speech. Always. The truth is out there.

[baby_mouse]

2. Yes, there are those on both sides who don't get this.

I don't understand what they think freedom of speech is. This trotting out of the phrase whenever someone says something nasty back to you is a kind of weird, paranoid appeal to some imaginary audience who will go "awwwww!" or something.

I have the most horrible sneaking suspicion that the vast majority of the Right are using this imaginary audience as a kind of moral pole star to form their opinions from. This imaginary audeince has several characteristics:

1. It's "fair and balanced" (Balanced? Why would reality be "balanced"? Why do think reality is like a giant see-saw? Balanced between what and what?)

2. It's ideology mostly consists of whatever nonsense they can make up to fill in the gaps left in their brains when they can't refute OBVIOUS common sense and are feeling a bit stupid, and ANYTHING will do so long as it directly opposes the left. I really don't think they CARE what they believe, so long as their beliefs "balance" what they perceive to be a threat.

3. IT NEVER CHANGES. EVER.

[Burning Water]

5. I agree completely, however,

I take it a step further than I think you are doing.

They are perfectly within their rights to claim their freedom of speech is being violated by people criticizing them. They are also perfectly wrong. But they have the right to do so, they have the right to offend, and then call whoever calls them on it a close-minded bigot, if they wish. Freedom of speech is about the right to offend. Blacks, whites, Christians, Jews, in this day and age Muslims, Buddhist, atheists, liberal conservatives, straights and gays. Whoever. And they have the right to respond, verbally. This process can be reiterated infinitely.

Fair-minded people who listen will soon enough know who is in the right, and who is not, who can support their arguments with facts and logic, and who cannot.

Freedom of speech has been very good for liberals and progressives, and we must defend it even when our ox is the one being gored. Because once we lose it, it will be gone.

[Solo_in_MD]

23. Indeed both sides need to check them selves on this occasionally

[eallen]

3. Furthermore, moderated forums are a part of free speech.

If you don't like the editorial policy from at journal or forum or website, feel free to start your own, and edit it in the way that you wish. Freedom of speech does not include the right to set the rules in someone else's forum, or to get your words heard by their audience. It is the right to start your own, and to attract an audience, if you do well enough at that.

[baby_mouse]

4. Concurrence.

Freedom of speech does not equal freedom of audience.

(However, I think the right are still smarting from those protests against the administration's AIDS policy in the 80s when AIDS sufferes would walk into churches and start shouting: "STOP HATING US!")

[Burning Water]

6. "A free press

belongs to the person who owns one."

I agree, completely

[Burning Water]

7. Now here

I have a problem. I'm not at all certain "free speech" includes actions such as trespass. Or interfering with other people who are going about exercising their own rights (in this case, to worship). A protest outside the church does, however, fall into the "free speech" category.

[baby_mouse]

9. Oh, certainly.

They didn't really have any right to protest in that way, at all. They were arrested, um, annoying as it is, I have to say legitimately. It still worked, though, from their point of view, it made the issue much more widely known. The church goers were NOT pleased. They exceeded their rights as a gamble and in an indirect way it paid off, they got more publicity, which I suspect was the goal.

I don't know the ins and outs all that well, but I think if I had participated in one of those protests I would have felt foolish for claiming a right to free speech in that situation. I don't know that anyone did or didn't.

I certainly wouldn't want some RW twat to turn up at one of my drumming rehearsals for Beltane and tell me I was a godless bastard who was going to go to hell but I can see it from his point of view, even though his point of view, in this case, would be wrong. :-) He could also be legitimately arrested.

This was a bit of a tricky one. There was a serious public heatlh issue being completely swept under the carpet because various officials thought the victims were "faggots" and so didn't matter. It required RADICAL intervention.

[The Magistrate]

8. One Of My Favorite Quotes On The Matter, Ma'am

"They were going to say we interfered with freedom of expression. That is a lie, and we could not allow them to print it."

[baby_mouse]

11. Why thank you, Sir.

...your visits to my threads are always appreciated. Even though sometimes you get my gender wrong. Still, in remembrance of your undisputed brilliance I shall assume that you are as big a fan of me as I am of you (Magistrate Fan Club Forum, anyone?) and pretend you said "Milady" as a tribute to some of my more...expressive moments.

x ;-)

----------------

Grace Kelly in raybans and a pale blue convertible postively *hurtling* round the more romantic parts of Milan to pick YOU up for dinner darling... :D

[Greyhound]

15. A query, good sir. From where does this gem originate? n/t

[The Magistrate]

16. A Sandinista Front Minister Of Information, Sir

Back in the early eighties when they were still feeling their oats and living large....

Still, it is a beautiful summary of a real dilemna: it is hard to argue deliberate lies have any place in public discourse.

[Greyhound]

20. Thank you, it figures it comes from a disciple of the neocons. n/t

[The Magistrate]

26. As A Matter Of Curiousity, Sir

You consider the Sandinista Liberation front of Nicaragua a neo-con organ?

[Greyhound]

30. weren't they the ones that the raygun administration was backing

through the illegal arms sales to Iran? Or were they the other, democratic(?) side?

[Skinner]

10. Minor quibble.

I think freedom of speech actually does give you the right to "stomp your feet and mewl like a puking babe when people disagree with you."

But you are correct when you say that freedom of speech does not protect anyone from being called on their stupidity.

[baby_mouse]

12. Editing...

typetypetype...

Merci buckets...

[baby_mouse]

13. Damn, too late... Well, yes, you're right.

Instead of "grant you the *right* to stomp your feet and mewl like a puking babe when people disagree with you" I should have said "actually lend you the air of the persecuted party when you stomp your feet and mewl like a puking babe when people disagree with you, though that is your right."

[Greyhound]

14. A point: While I agree with the essence of your statement,

rights are inalienable, not granted by government. To suppose that your rights flow from the government presumes that the same government can take them back whenever they see fit. Rights flow from the people who consent to be governed. An important distinction, I believe.

[baby_mouse]

17. I'm not *quite* sure what that means.

I'm aware of this "inalienable" right thing, but surely it has to be someone's job to keep them that way?

I can see the unpleasantness of the thought that rights can be taken away at the whim of a governing body but your statement that rights "flow" from the people, AFAICS comes perilously close to meaning the same as the old hat that we have "no more rights than those we choose to confer on one another", reducing the set of hypotheticals directing morality to "conjecture" and basing our expectations of how we should treat one another solely on, er, how we already do generally. Which would be a bit grubby. Of course, I suppose it could be held that I was taking a similarly "pragmatic" approach but substituting governing bodies for the populace, in which case I have to say you're probably right, but... not entirely understanding in that case how, through distortion of perception, a "right" can, in the end, avoid being reduced to a "bunch of liberal whining", I don't know what "inalienable" means, unless you speak in the voice mode of Plato. In which case... fair enough, I guess. :-)

[ArbustoBuster]

18. The implication in the Declaration of Independence...

...is that rights are inherent in mankind, cannot be taken away, and anyone who tries to take them away should and must be resisted by force if necessary.

That said, I certainly agree with you that freedom of speech isn't the freedom from someone calling you a dumbass if you hold dumbass opinions. :)

[baby_mouse]

22. I thought the wording was:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident"

Rather than

"These truths are self-evident"

meaning, roughly:

"Well, we have a nation here and we all want to do our own thing yet still have law, so we have to agree on *something* and this is it"

Rather than

"There exists this otherworldly world of rights that shine like pretty angels and they are with us always even though other people may say that they aren't" (sorry, that's my materialist streak coming out).

Am I wrong?

Of course, uh, they might have meant both. But I still don't really know what it means even if that's the case, to me the only way of avoiding "rights" becoming like a "soul" (and therefore people being able to argue yes or no for a right in the same completely non-evidence or analysis or "real-world" based way as they do for the behaviour of souls ("it says so in the Bible so it's good enough for me", to which my response is: "Just because it's good enough for you doesn't mean it's good enough") which would be scaaaary) is by extracting them from hypotheticals, from logic, from what actually happens when you legislate and try to come to moral decisions, with or without the guiding presence of "God".

To me we have rights for a reason, they are a way of finding our way through the world *together*. And it's that *togetherness* that matters, for me. The togetherness, but *not* necessarily *sameness*.

The concept of a right, as I understand it, is as a baseline against which complex new situations can be assessed (I know that doesn't entirely do the concept justice, but it would have to go into great depth to adequately cover the emotional impact of the *necessity* of human rights without discussing a specific example of a violation of rights), and, though I have not performed this with EVERY right under the sun, I can't think of many rights I have that don't basically fall out of a fairly simple analysis of what the world is, where I fit into it realistically and how I and my fellow humans can live a life in it free from... er... horribleness.

To clarify a little, to me, rights fall out of a *logical* understanding of people.

I think the best way to show this in the case of free speech is that stopping people from saying things you don't like isn't logical, you're basically blocking yourself off from a bunch of *information* that may be useful or necessary, also from other people who might need it and given that we can only assess the content of some article of speech 1. if we actually allow ourselves to hear it and 2. in tandem with our own experience which may be inadequate to assess it, blocking speech is *always* destructive rather than constructive.

Even if it's a whole load of cruddy shit from Freeperville. If nothing else, we know what they think.

And that's just that example. The rest, as far as I can see, kinda fall out by themselves if you just assume that "People everywhere should basically be having a good time" is Capital T "True".

But PLEASE don't make me do every single one, I'll go cross-eyed and be late for work. ;-) Also, some of them have holes.

I must add at this juncture that it must look like I'm belittling the concept of rights... really I can't say it strongly enough that I think they're much MUCH more important than "morals", which I equate with nursery rhymes and things you find in fortune cookies. I prefer the term ethics, anyway, and would say that ethics are based on rights and "morals" seem generally to be based on how well they scan.

[Greyhound]

19. It is simply that we, as human beings, are born with rights.

It is our job to maintain our rights. That's the very foundation of our nation, that those rights are inherent within ourselves, and cannot be granted nor revoked by others, unless we allow it. Sadly, we have been allowing it for quite sometime.

[baby_mouse]

24. Well this is the thing that I find odd.

Cos, I'm not in your nation. So what is it about *being born in the States guaranteeing that you have rights* if it it's something OTHER than the fact that you have a governing body (and an army) protecting them for you from birth? I guess mutual agreement among its citizens to honour the concept, if necessary with your life, would seem to be the closest explanation of "inalienable", to me, that I can understand (no less a noble cause, indeed, if I'm right), and this would explain the strength with which Americans adhere to the concept, the power and honour that flows from such an agreement played out in everday life as *well* as the courts (which is where the concept of "rights" tends to be used more often over here in the UK) would be a wonderful thing.

But, unfortunately, that idea has a brother.

There's a kind of ghostly implication of the idea that if you're in the States they are "inalienable", but, er, they aren't if you're born elsewhere, and it's that there's almost a mysterious *Platonic* rights awarding entity hovering over the States and nowhere else. It becomes almost like a religion (which quality of the Bill of Rights I'm going to have to assume you don't buy into, although some people in the States certainly seem to). So, essentially, it becomes that people outside the States have no rights, not even the ones they award themselves because they aren't being given rights by the Flying Rights-Awarding Monster. I can see a direct connection between this (in this post, admittedly overstated) stance and Abu Ghraib. (I'm certainly not accusing *you* of believing this, nor any particular individual... say rather that it is like an almost subconscious (although arguably, in some individual cases *quite* conscious (though not quite rational and not described by its adherents a *I* have described it)) mode of thought that may interject and interfere where matters of rights come into question between the States and citizens of other nations).

I've gone totally off topic. :-) Also, what a clumsy paragraph. Although I think it makes sense...

[ArbustoBuster]

27. There's a logical reason why rights are considered inalienable.

It's because if a right is something you've always had, and which therefore wasn't given to you by someone else, then no amount of government whining, or use of force, or passing of laws can ever take it away. Those inalienable, inborn rights cannot be given away, either, which is very important.

Whether you consider this a useful legal fiction or you consider it to be because rights were given to you by God, it means that rights aren't negotiable in politics. They're always off the table. (At least in theory.)

I personally don't believe in God, so to me, we have the rights which we proclaim for ourselves - but once we proclaim them, they can't be taken away. Like much of politics, it doesn't have to make sense; it just has to work. :) It's a method of making liberal democracy self-perpetuating.

Many Americans, myself included, are of the strong opinion that human rights belong to everyone, not just to Americans. Unfortunately, "many Americans" isn't "all Americans." Our idiot president, for instance, is of the opinion that rights belong to rich Texas oilmen and no one else.

[baby_mouse]

28. um.

Yes, where the Flying Rights-Awarding Monster is YOU and I, it's fine.

[Greyhound]

29. I think you have identified the disconnect that exists in, what passes

for, the minds of many amerikans.

The original idea had nothing to do with nationality, but was recognized as an integral part of what it is to be human, along the lines of all people being created equal, not all Americans, but all of humanity.

Not too long ago (historically speaking) this was universally understood by the Citizens of this country, and was the source of "The American Dream" that was common to all. Sometime after WWII Citizens were demoted to consumers and liberty was replaced with nationalism in the national consciousness. The dream of free, autonomous, individuals working together out of common cause, was replaced by the acquisition of material possessions.

Where we built (and stole) this nation through this common notion of individual freedom and responsibility, the plunderers saw that the populace was far too independent to comply with their wishes, so they subtly changed the founding principles. Where once we expanded because we had a better way, we were saddled with the concept of "manifest destiny", IOW we grew, not because we offered a better deal but, because God directed us and made it possible.

So anyway, you are right and we have been wrong for quite some time now. Thus, the blurring of the lines, where "inalienable" comes to mean amerikans only (formerly men only, then white women, then people of color, etc.). It is a sick perversion of the real "American Dream".

The whole thing has been turned upside-down and inside-out, and too few realize it.

[porphyrian]

21. As long as your freedoms don't infringe on mine...

...say whatever the fuck you want. I'm certainly not afraid to say whatever I want back. That's how I feel about it.

[woo me with science]

25. Excellent post. Thanks.

It's worth pointing out every once in a while as a reminder.