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Can we retire this trite remark about free speech only applying to government restriction? It’s simply not true. It’s true only when speaking of the First Ame
by nostromo 8y ago
Can we retire this trite remark about free speech only applying to government restriction?
It’s simply not true. It’s true only when speaking of the First Amendment specifically — but the concept and ideal of free speech and expression is much larger than the First Amendment. It also has a much longer history, dating back to Ancient Greece.
- oconnor663 8y agoTrue, but at the same time the conventional value of free speech has a lot more exceptions than the Constitutional version. If someone's calling you out for being a jerk, and your best defense is "hey our culture usually values letting people disagree," everyone's probably going to think you're a jerk.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 8y agoThe concept of free speech has a long history, sure. Just as long is the history of that concept being totally divorced from the types of things you can actually get away with saying in any given situation. You can basically think of the freedom of speech as guaranteed by the first amendment as an approximate upper bound on pragmatic free speech. It is not (at least in the minds of most people) an optimum that we should be striving for in all contexts. It's just the level where we don't think anyone should be locked up or fined for exercising.
- gimmeThaBeet 8y agoNo, I'm not going to retire my trite remark. You can't stage a protest in a shopping mall, no matter how much it looks like a public space. There's no expectation you would have freedom of speech there. The liberty of property would seem to be the most powerful of all. If your life looks more like a shopping mall than a public square, I don't know what other expectations any modern person or Athenian alike may have.