2 ms·

Do groups of people have a right to free speech or just individuals acting alone?

• etripe 7y ago
  The group as an aggregate has the right to free speech because each individual does and they share the right to assembly. There is no good reason to afford the group a new collective identity with its own rights other than allowing people to hide behind the group identity and avoid personal persecution. That's a risky proposition and should be curtailed or at least conditional. Should the Catholic church be able to hide behind its fictional collective identity to shield priests from abuse charges? Should execs be able to blame "corporate strategy" to avoid persecution as if they had no contribution? If so, to what degree does that still warrant large wages? Should diplomats be able to run down people in the street without penalty, run red lights or import contraband? Can ads lie about product specifications, safety, ingredients, or the value proposition? As with programming questions: it depends. I would argue the answer is definitely not always and without conditions.