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>We have the right to speech coded in law because it is meant to keep the state at bay - it isn’t given to us by the state, it exists apriori. That's certainly
by claudiawerner 7y ago
>We have the right to speech coded in law because it is meant to keep the state at bay - it isn’t given to us by the state, it exists apriori.
That's certainly true, but it's worth asking what the justification is for the 1st amendment, i.e. what makes speech so special (after all, we have lively debate on most other amendments, such as the 2nd and in the past the 18th), and to say that freedom of speech exists a priori is just as true of speech as it is any other action, including actions we would count as murder, or theft, etc.
- nyxtom 7y agoThe problem with this formulation is that all other laws, all other rights, only exist as a result of the first a-priori assumption: that you are allowed to engage in discussion of any idea. Without that, people self censor and can’t feel free to think. That isn’t to say that there are no regulations on content. Plenty of media has standards and regulations about how it produces content, rating systems for media, and a system of classifying content that is acceptable for different degrees. For instance, I could see better regulation around a rating system for YouTube content to prevent children from stumbling upon poor content. This is still different than banning speech.