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The 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 dire
by MikeUt 5y ago
The 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".
- tomlockwood 5y agoIt doesn't imply that at all.
- WalterBright 5y agoHistory shows us it does. The people who used to run the ACLU were very well aware of that.
- tomlockwood 5y ago> What's a more fundamental right, life, or speech? Could you help me understand how "history shows us" that this question implies that the loss of free speech can't be a threat to life?
- WalterBright 5y agoSure. Nobody dared speak up against the Holocaust. (Those that did were sent to a labor camp or had their heads sliced off.) Lack of free speech meant the Nazis could (and did) kill anyone for any reason with complete impunity. There was no right to life under Hitler. The first thing dictators do is remove free speech. This is what enables removing all the other rights at the dictator's whim, because then nobody can speak out against it. Nobody can even inform others about it. This is why totalitarian regimes so aggressively suppress free speech. The Soviet Union collapsed soon after Gorbachev stopped repressing free speech (glasnost and peristroika). This is not a coincidence.
- tomlockwood 5y agoStill not sure how the question implied that the loss of the right to free speech can't threaten life.