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It seems to me that certain people fixate on free speech because they have the luxury to be able to. It's like once they've progressed past a certain level of M
by tomlockwood 5y ago
It seems to me that certain people fixate on free speech because they have the luxury to be able to. It's like once they've progressed past a certain level of Maslow's hierarchy they forget about the previous levels.
First step of the free speech agenda: Breathe.
- depaulagu 5y agoNo, people fixate on free speech because no other right even makes sense if you don't have free expression. It's the foundation for our democratic society.
- tomlockwood 5y agoNo, without existence, there can be no democracy or democratic representation. Being allowed to exist is the most fundamental right.
- ravel-bar-foo 5y agoIf you don't exist you don't have rights to defend. Did you mean the right to life, as in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?
- tomlockwood 5y agoThat's precisely my point. Food, water, shelter, air, and good health, are all required before one can begin to pursue the right to free speech.
- ponow 5y agoNo, those life essentials are not required _before_ getting the right to freedom-of-speech. Indeed, freedom of speech may be essential to discussing how to arrange a society to enable the procurement of those things. Holding off freedom of speech until "basic needs" are met is, to me, a way to guarantee that a tyrant in a poor country stays in power. Ultimately, those life necessities must be provided by oneself or by someone else, or some combination. Freedom of speech can allow for the best ways of providing these things to be selected. The alternative is that only the prevailing view is considered or approved, often leading to much worse provision of these necessities, including starvation (feudal systems, communism, warlords, etc.).
- tomlockwood 5y agoYou can speak without air?
- michaelt 5y agoEh, countries like Germany seem to have managed OK with banning nazi symbols - it hasn't proven to be a slippery slope leading to a ban on criticising the government, or anything like that.
- toyg 5y agoGermany has strong protections for individual freedoms and privacy in their constitution, precisely to avoid an illiberal government from arising ever again. The Nazi ban is effectively the lone exception to the rule. This said, European police generally gets away with a degree of prevarication that North Americans would find unconceivable. The US constitution enshrines the rights of individuals over government, in a way that no European country can match (as far as I know).
- StavrosK 5y ago> This said, European police generally gets away with a degree of prevarication that North Americans would find unconceivable. Not to be inflammatory, but North American police generally gets away with a degree of murder that Europeans find inconceivable.
- hallway_monitor 5y agoStop the straw man please. No one is going around killing citizens. Something like nine unarmed people per year are killed by US police out of 10 million interactions.
- StavrosK 5y agoNice statistic, but killings by police are 28 per million in the states versus 1.3 in Germany/France: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforcement_officers_by_country https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enfo...
- skocznymroczny 5y ago
- MikeUt 5y agoOr maybe they don't have the luxury of ignoring free speech, that others take for granted. Claiming a stance is a result of "luxury" is not the shortcut to win a debate that you imagine it to be.
- tomlockwood 5y agoWhat is a more basic right: 1) Life 2) Free speech Which one do you feel precedes the other?
- MikeUt 5y agoOk, I'll play your game. Political enemies (in China, the USSR, other historic Eastern European states, Turkey.. maybe you'd prefer MLK as an example) are denied the right to life on the basis of their speech. So if they fight for the right to not be sent to gulags (from which many did not return) on the basis of speech, you consider this an expression of "luxury"? And do you think free speech might help fighting for their right to life? For example would BLM find fighting to end police killings of Black people easier, or harder, if they could be jailed for their advocacy?
- tomlockwood 5y agoAre you playing my "game"? My question is pretty simple: what's a more fundamental right, life, or speech? Which one would you select if you could only select one? Which one is it possible to have without the other? You simply cannot exercise free speech without life, you cannot fight for free speech if you are not alive. Free speech is totally dependent on existence.
- MikeUt 5y agoThe question is simple but inane, and implies losing the right to speech cannot be life-threatening. Then once conditions progress and the right to life is directly under attack, there is "no one allowed to speak for you".
- dmitrygr 5y agoOr perhaps they come from a place where speech can get you jailed, and unlike you know what it is like to have no constitutional right to free speech? Perhaps they know the value of what you seem so eager to give up, because unlike you they've lived without it? There are literally places in the world right now where wearing the wrong t-shirt color outside (Thailand, Belarus) Can get you jailed, tortured, or possibly killed.
- tomlockwood 5y agoAll the people that come from a place where speech can get you jailed, can only come because they are alive. There's a certain element of survivorship bias there.
- dmitrygr 5y agoSo by your logic, as long as at least one murderer in the world exists, we are not allowed to discuss any other topic, liberty, or important subject?
- tomlockwood 5y agoThe ACLU still has free speech lawyers, and I supported the ACLU to the tune of 1k last year. But logically it follows that supporting the right of African Americans to survive encounters with police, or for Transgender people to have healthcare, increases the amount of free speech in the world by ensuring their voices can speak in it. A decrease in the survival of people is necessarily a decrease in free speech.
- ponow 5y agoThe right of people not engaged in violence to survive police encounters is a natural/inalienable right and a right to healthcare are not similar classes of rights. The former is a "negative right", or liberty, from harm by others (the police), whereas the latter is a "positive right", or entitlement/privilege, to goods & services provided by others. The Bill of Rights was primarily all about liberties / negative rights, whereas since the 20th century people have started talking about entitlements as rights, when they're not, because that entitlements ultimately must be provided by others (primarily through taxes, but also in constraints/mandates on the behavior of others, e.g., limitations on striking by police or other services, the requirement to register in the draft / Selective Service for men, & eminent domain). Government entitlements typically involve the involuntary actions and compelled behavior of people.
- WalterBright 5y agoFree speech was guaranteed by the US Constitution in a time where the US was a poor backwater still relying on subsistence farming.