I think it's alive, but struggling. For example, my idea of free speech is an ability to yell "FIRE" in a crowded room with kids + children. My idea of free speech is to say anything I want to anybody else without need for retalition by law. I should have a right to threaten, insult, and defame others. Then again I wouldn't want any of that happening to me, so that's the dillema LOL I should start a thread on what people consider to be free speech & it's limits.
The problem, of course, is that you can't say "free speech" and then turn around and put "limits" on it! That's a direct contradiction in terms. But the popular idea of "free speech" is fraught with perils if we take it without limits ...like yelling FIRE in a crowded theater. Even saying something like "We should have free speech as long as it doesn't harm others" is full of contradictions because of what some think is harmful, while others don't. Baron Max
Do what you already know is the right thing to do. ....and hope that others do the same. You already know what's "right", don't you? If not, then you're terribly young and inexperienced with life. It's the same with others ....they know, even if they do something stupid. Baron Max
Oh, I don't know, James, perhaps there actually could be free speech if one lived 1,000 miles from anyone else on Earth. Hermits in caves might have free speech, don't ya' think? Baron Max
Yea Baron but there would be no one around to listen. Living in a cave is equivalent to thinking to oneself but never expressing those thoughts to others.
Certainly not when you are around. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Every thing is of course relative and it all depends where you draw the line at what free speech is. I think you will find though that in the free west there is very little that hasn't been put into words and tolerated as long as it is not acted upon or implies that it could be acted upon. So if you define free speach as anything that is not a threat to anyone else - free speech exists.
But if you put any limits or conditions on it, then it ain't "free" anything, is it? If there were such a thing as "free speech", then there couldn't be limits on it by the very definition of "free". Baron Max
Not if you define 'speech' as something that is purely spoken and doesn't indicate a direct consequence. If words are the indicator of an action that may follow, it is no longer mere speech but a set of words as a prerequisit to an action(and you use the words threat to describe this set of words rather than speech).
hi all free speech is a nonsense their is no such thing... Almost everything you say you pay for in consequences... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Take care zak
This is a red herring that people invariably throw out to support their own belief that free speech cannot be tolerated. In fact this situation is already quite adequately dealt with by the law. The law clearly prohibits you from lying to other people in order to manipulate them into doing something they would otherwise not do. This is called fraud. The law is primarily used to prosecute people who lie in order to get people to give them money for investments in bad stocks, poor-quality used cars, real estate in swamps, non-existent Nigerian treasury funds, etc. It is also codified separately as slander. You can't tell lies about me in order to make my customers stop buying my services, to make people not vote for me, to make my boss fire me, or to make my wife doubt my fidelity. But without separate codification it can be used just as easily to prosecute the man who comes to your sister's door pretending to be a government agent following a lead on radioactive underwear and exhorting her to strip down immediately to avoid radiation sickness. It can certainly be used to prosecute someone who yells "fire" in a dark, crowded theater in order to make people panic, simply for the evil thrill of it. Other laws, at least in America, have been narrowly crafted to strengthen the case against specific types of speech. You may not use your charisma to assume leadership of an angry mob and say things to them that are calculated to cause a riot. You may not use your eloquence and persuasion to convince people that it would be a good idea to overthrow the government of the United States by force rather than by the remedies provided in the Constitution, destroying the laws protecting free speech and all other laws. You may not have a meeting with your buddies and use your knowledge and reasoning to conspire to commit a felony. In each of these cases the principle is not your freedom of speech but the fact that a good faith attempt to commit a crime is just as deserving of punishment as the crime itself. And in most cases the law errs on the side of caution and will not convict someone if the evidence does not prove that he could actually have carried out the threat. You are indeed free to be a cranky loon if your speech does not have the power to inspire others. The one recent addition to the laws about speech that bothers me is "hate speech." You can be prosecuted for addressing people with obscene or excessively rude epithets about their sexual orientation, religion, race, etc. The theory, I suppose, is that you're trying to provoke a fight, which could turn into a brawl, which could turn into a riot. I would be more comfortable if they had just left it at "inciting a riot" and waited to see if a riot was about to ensue. In the USA we uneasily tolerate a low level of violence between individuals as long as deadly force is not used. If one white man and one black man have a fist fight because one called the other a nasty name, we'll throw them both in jail overnight if either complains or if it "disturbs the peace" so badly that an onlooker complains, but otherwise it falls in the category of "the law does not deal with trifles." The way these epithets are hurled around these days by comedians and in popular slang, they can be easily misinterpreted. We all need to grow a thicker skin. I'm greatly dismayed by the trend in Europe to criminalize speech that is merely unpopular. People who say they believe that the Holocaust never happened, or simply that the Nazis had some good ideas, should be allowed to be heard by anyone willing to listen. "The best disinfectant is sunshine," as Louis Brandeis said. We really need to have these people out in the open where we can keep an eye on them, not to send them scurrying into basements to have secret meetings. I'd much rather have the eyewitness accounts of the Holocaust and the filmed interviews with the tattooed survivors constantly kept in the public eye as a rebuttal against these evil idiots. We owe the millions of victims a better fate than to become an urban myth like the poodle in the microwave oven. You have the right to do all of those things. You are only proscribed from deliberately lying in order to defraud people or defame their character, and from deliberately provoking a crowd to violence or planning a felony. These are very narrow restrictions on free speech and are well balanced against the need to prevent crime and maintain order. I guess I just posted the first response to that one. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Then it's not "free" speech, is it? Any limitations negate the use of the term "free", no matter how you want to view it. It's somewhat similar, ain't it, to shooting a gun at someone's head. It ain't murder until the bullet actually hits the man and kills him! Before the bullet hits, the crime is "illegally discharging a weapon". Baron Max
Language is merely a technology, albeit one of the earliest. It's probably the one that provided the organizational and planning ability to migrate out of Africa. To play semantics and insist on the absolute "freedom" to use any technology negligently, capriciously, destructively, or even downright maliciously, no matter what the consequences to others, is simply to discover the limits at which the "freedom" of one person violates the "freedom" of another. It's like the classic definition of my freedom to swing my fist being limited at the point just before it contacts your nose. People only have absolute freedom of speech with their inferiors. In feudal times they were free to lie to slaves, serfs, servants, and anyone in a lower rung on the ladder of aristocracy. Today it's limited to our children, to whom many of us lie about things like sex, drugs and the Tooth Fairy in the conviction that we're guiding their maturation. We forgo lying to our peers because we accept it as immoral to deceive them for the purpose of manipulating their behavior, and we in turn expect to be treated the same way. It's the fundamental law of reciprocity that supports civiliation. We all agree to treat each other as friends and family, trusting them and caring about them, because if we all had to divert labor and capital into protecting ourselves from each other, civilization would grind to a halt. "Freedom of speech" is about something more important than the bonehead principles that two related but unacquainted tribes worked out ten thousand years ago as a way to live together in one super-village. It's about the more advanced problems that arose when civilizations became larger and began assimilating people from ever more different cultures. It's about absorbing strangers who become increasingly strange as the boundaries of nations expanded. It's not about saying something that is patently false and which you know is false, just to be a punk or a con man. It's about saying something you believe is true but the family next door whose ancestors came from another part of the world believe is false and finds offensive to their traditions. It's about saying that the government has not been doing a very good job and needs to be overhauled. It's about saying that business leaders or labor leaders or nature lovers or hunters or off-road vehicle enthusiasts are selfish and make life harder for others. It's about saying something insulting to your neighbor because his children are out of control or because his people think it's okay to get raging drunk or because his women bare most of their skin or hide behind masks like ninjas. It's about being skeptical of history books and saying something that brings tears to the eyes of people whose families were murdered in bulk and buried in pits. It's about saying you observe that certain principles passed down as religion have inspired their followers to destroy entire civilizations. To derail the discussion and make it about kids pulling pranks in theaters verges on the sophomoric. Fortunately we do have the freedom to speak sophomorically.
