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The fundamental problem with the government drawing any line is that you can't have free speech under those circumstances. Is advocating for Communism harmful t

The fundamental problem with the government drawing any line is that you can't have free speech under those circumstances. Is advocating for Communism harmful to Capitalism? Is advocating for the rights of women to abort their babies harmful to the fetuses? What about touting the benefits of Schedule I drugs? Surely that can be seen as harmful to the public health. It doesn't matter what you or I think about the examples I gave above. It only matters what the government thinks. And if they think any or all of those are harmful concepts, then by using your reasoning any speech invoking those concepts would be controlled by the government. That's simply untenable as far as I'm concerned. The only way to ensure the government doesn't have that kind of power over words, is to allow any and all ideas to be expressed. It's impossible to draw lines on which ideas are allowed to be expressed and those that aren't, without running into this hazard.

derefr 10y ago
Those are all abstract speech and therefore are usually legal everywhere. (They might be "treason" in some places, but that's separate from the issue of whether they're harmful. Treasonous speech is whatever speech a government doesn't like, whereas "non-protected" speech is the set of things its citizens don't care to defend you for saying.) The thing Canada mostly considers illegal is saying something like "hey everybody, you should hate/kill X because they're {Native American, gay, old, disabled, etc.}!" with a specific X that people might then go and kill. It's not even that we don't want to protect that speech as speech; it just seems to lead directly to hate crimes being committed a non-negligible proportion of the time. So we make hate speech itself illegal, to try to stop the hate crimes early.
TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
> The fundamental problem with the government drawing any line is that you can't have free speech under those circumstances. Is advocating for Communism harmful to Capitalism? Is advocating for the rights of women to abort their babies harmful to the fetuses? What about touting the benefits of Schedule I drugs? Surely that can be seen as harmful to the public health. These are complicated questions. But this is what case law exists for. The US, for example, allows one to speak of revolutions “in broad terms”. > That's simply untenable as far as I'm concerned. The only way to ensure the government doesn't have that kind of power over words, is to allow any and all ideas to be expressed. Allowing absolute freedom of speech is self-defeating. Yes, now the government can't hurt you, but your opponents can use their “free speech” to silence you. It's not healthy for a democracy, and this is why no country on earth has absolute freedom of speech.
- function_seven 10y ago
  > Yes, now the government can't hurt you, but your opponents can use their “free speech” to silence you. I'm interested in some examples of this. At first blush this statement reads to me as a "marketplace of ideas", which is a feature in my opinion. But I could be interpreting your statement wrong.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
    They can publish your location and tell vigilantes to go to your house and beat you up. That's speech.
Tomte 10y ago
In civilized countries governments do not draw the line. The legislature and the judiciary do.
- function_seven 10y ago
  A legislature or a judiciary are still the government. I use the term to refer to the whole mechanism, not just an executive. Regardless of where they derive their power from (democracy, monarchy, whatever). Constitutions exist to provide limits on even the power of the current majority to change fundamental aspects of governance. The U.S. Constitution for example, requires a very high bar before alterations can be made, precisely to avoid even democratically-elected representatives from making changes, even where those changes would enjoy popular support.

derefr 10y ago

Those are all abstract speech and therefore are usually legal everywhere. (They might be "treason" in some places, but that's separate from the issue of whether they're harmful. Treasonous speech is whatever speech a government doesn't like, whereas "non-protected" speech is the set of things its citizens don't care to defend you for saying.) The thing Canada mostly considers illegal is saying something like "hey everybody, you should hate/kill X because they're {Native American, gay, old, disabled, etc.}!" with a specific X that people might then go and kill. It's not even that we don't want to protect that speech as speech; it just seems to lead directly to hate crimes being committed a non-negligible proportion of the time. So we make hate speech itself illegal, to try to stop the hate crimes early.

TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago

> The fundamental problem with the government drawing any line is that you can't have free speech under those circumstances. Is advocating for Communism harmful to Capitalism? Is advocating for the rights of women to abort their babies harmful to the fetuses? What about touting the benefits of Schedule I drugs? Surely that can be seen as harmful to the public health. These are complicated questions. But this is what case law exists for. The US, for example, allows one to speak of revolutions “in broad terms”. > That's simply untenable as far as I'm concerned. The only way to ensure the government doesn't have that kind of power over words, is to allow any and all ideas to be expressed. Allowing absolute freedom of speech is self-defeating. Yes, now the government can't hurt you, but your opponents can use their “free speech” to silence you. It's not healthy for a democracy, and this is why no country on earth has absolute freedom of speech.

function_seven 10y ago
> Yes, now the government can't hurt you, but your opponents can use their “free speech” to silence you. I'm interested in some examples of this. At first blush this statement reads to me as a "marketplace of ideas", which is a feature in my opinion. But I could be interpreting your statement wrong.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
  They can publish your location and tell vigilantes to go to your house and beat you up. That's speech.

Tomte 10y ago

In civilized countries governments do not draw the line. The legislature and the judiciary do.

function_seven 10y ago
A legislature or a judiciary are still the government. I use the term to refer to the whole mechanism, not just an executive. Regardless of where they derive their power from (democracy, monarchy, whatever). Constitutions exist to provide limits on even the power of the current majority to change fundamental aspects of governance. The U.S. Constitution for example, requires a very high bar before alterations can be made, precisely to avoid even democratically-elected representatives from making changes, even where those changes would enjoy popular support.