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> no man wants...many do feel Are you appealing to the desires of the crowd (bandwagon fallacy), or to a moral principle? I'm talking about moral principles,

> no man wants...many do feel Are you appealing to the desires of the crowd (bandwagon fallacy), or to a moral principle? I'm talking about moral principles, which the laws and the government ought to uphold. If they don't, the law and/or government is in the wrong. The right to speak your mind is a moral right; arguably, the right to defend yourself with an attourney is a subset of this. The law is not the arbiter of what is right, or what rights humans possess "inalienably". The law only enforces and protects those rights (since it's inefficient for each person to defend their own rights against everyone else: "I will have my attourney at my trial, I challenge you to duel if you disagree"). If freedom of speech is impinged, then a human right has been trampled upon. If a private individual forces someone else to be silent, they are morally in the wrong, even though there's no law against it. If the US government did it, then the US acted against its constitution and broke a moral principle, if not the laws on the books.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago
Do you believe it should be legal to make death threats, print libel and slander that harm a man's reputation, spread around pictures taken of others in the shower without their consent, and publish stolen personal information? If not, then you do not believe in absolute freedom of speech, but only freedom of speech within the confines of the law.
- generalizations 6y ago
  > If not, then you do not believe in absolute freedom of speech, but only freedom of speech within the confines of the law. It's a cute 'gotcha', but you're not actually saying anything that relates to what I said. I said 'moral principle', not 'absolute', and you continue to refer to 'the law'. You're not distinguishing between the laws the government decides upon, and the moral principles we use to evaluate good laws and bad ones. From the outset, I said that there is a difference between saying that freedom of speech is something the government allocates to us, and something which the government ought to allow. Do you think the government gets to decide what we are, and are not, allowed to say?
  - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
    I don't believe in morality; it's an indefinable and unfalsifiable concept I simply said that the claim of believing in “freedom of speech, except where one not” is an empty, useless, and trivial statement. Everyone believes in “freedom of speech, except where he draw the line”.
    - generalizations 6y ago
      Where freedom of speech falls in the hierarchy of rights is not my concern. What is my concern, is who gets to choose what that hierarchy is and where freedom of speech exists on it. I'm arguing that the government is not who gets to determine what that hierarchy is, and thereby determine what gets to superceed freedom of speech.
      - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
        very well, who gets to determine that hierarchy and how will they enforce their determinations?
        generalizations 6y ago
        Not the government. And why should anyone inflict their view of morality on anyone else? I really don't want anyone - liberal, conservative, Christian or radical Islam - enforcing their determiniation of moral hierarchy on me. Do you?
        claudiawerner 6y ago
        > Not the government. And why should anyone inflict their view of morality on anyone else? To be clear, are you taking the position of the anarchist here? I mean no disrespect, I only wish to understand your position. I think most people would say, with various exemplars, that the government can legitimately have a blacklist maintained over certain speech, very much in the same way it can have one over certain actions. This is not an appeal to popularity, it is a statement of the non-anarchist position. You may think it is invalid, but by the same token, I think that consistently you'd have to see laws against murder or child rape to be invalid.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago

Do you believe it should be legal to make death threats, print libel and slander that harm a man's reputation, spread around pictures taken of others in the shower without their consent, and publish stolen personal information? If not, then you do not believe in absolute freedom of speech, but only freedom of speech within the confines of the law.

generalizations 6y ago
> If not, then you do not believe in absolute freedom of speech, but only freedom of speech within the confines of the law. It's a cute 'gotcha', but you're not actually saying anything that relates to what I said. I said 'moral principle', not 'absolute', and you continue to refer to 'the law'. You're not distinguishing between the laws the government decides upon, and the moral principles we use to evaluate good laws and bad ones. From the outset, I said that there is a difference between saying that freedom of speech is something the government allocates to us, and something which the government ought to allow. Do you think the government gets to decide what we are, and are not, allowed to say?
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago
  I don't believe in morality; it's an indefinable and unfalsifiable concept I simply said that the claim of believing in “freedom of speech, except where one not” is an empty, useless, and trivial statement. Everyone believes in “freedom of speech, except where he draw the line”.
  - generalizations 6y ago
    Where freedom of speech falls in the hierarchy of rights is not my concern. What is my concern, is who gets to choose what that hierarchy is and where freedom of speech exists on it. I'm arguing that the government is not who gets to determine what that hierarchy is, and thereby determine what gets to superceed freedom of speech.
    - bryanrasmussen 6y ago
      very well, who gets to determine that hierarchy and how will they enforce their determinations?
      - generalizations 6y ago
        Not the government. And why should anyone inflict their view of morality on anyone else? I really don't want anyone - liberal, conservative, Christian or radical Islam - enforcing their determiniation of moral hierarchy on me. Do you?
        claudiawerner 6y ago
        > Not the government. And why should anyone inflict their view of morality on anyone else? To be clear, are you taking the position of the anarchist here? I mean no disrespect, I only wish to understand your position. I think most people would say, with various exemplars, that the government can legitimately have a blacklist maintained over certain speech, very much in the same way it can have one over certain actions. This is not an appeal to popularity, it is a statement of the non-anarchist position. You may think it is invalid, but by the same token, I think that consistently you'd have to see laws against murder or child rape to be invalid.