12 of 30 - Freedom of Speech

[aggienaut]

An acquaintance of mine recently posted the above piece of tripe on facebook in an earnest manner, and proceeded to argue with me in favor of it's central idea. I've had some similar discussions lately, so I thought I'd post an entry about it. Let us start with oh just an obscure line from an old document that is lying around:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

   That is, you guessed it, the First Amendment! Two amendments in as many days!

   As noted I've had other discussions recently as well, with people who don't seem to quite value Freedom of Speech.

   After I pointed out that in the United States people can display offensive symbols because Freedom of Speech, "I don't agree with what you're saying but I'll defend to the death your right to say it," and all that, he argued that it wasn't speech because it wasn't "intellectual discourse," it was "just a symbol." To wit: "Flying a flag of any kind is intellectually inferior to to actual speech. One is sacred the other is stupid."
   To this I say, and said, that the right to fly a flag or otherwise display symbols representing one's beliefs and values is in fact the exercise of Freedom of Conscience, a subsidiary of freedom of speech that I would argue is actually even more fundamental.

   In cases like this I often suggest the person try applying what I can the "if the shoe was on the other foot," test. They seem to take it for granted that the moral majority and the government would always share their values. I'm eternally thankful that the Founding Fathers didn't make this mistake, and indeed, it's probably because tehy were splitting off from a government they didn't agree with that they were so insightful. So to put the shoe on the other foot, if flags and such symbols are "intellectually inferior" to protected speech, imagine just a generation ago, when the government and main stream morality could very plausibly have declared that the gay pride flag should be banned.

   Another related argument I had with a friend regarded the crazy preachers who periodically appear on university campuses spewing hateful rhetoric. Once again I was defending their freedom of speech and my friend argued that this particular speech of theirs was nothing but hateful and that there should be a "usefulness," test on whether or not speech actually furthers any kind of discourse. The problem with this idea is that "usefulness" simply cannot be measured objectively, and while we may be pleased to find the government clamping down on these hateful preachers, "if the shoe were on the other foot," and the government was was not perfectly pleased with the "usefulness" of what WE wanted to say, you can bet we'd be thinking that wasn't so great any more. Simply put, no interpretation of rights can hinge upon the assumption that the government and moral weight of society will always be on your side.

Comments

[kilobot8.livejournal.com]

But can we remove the confederate flags from public buildings, like government buildings, where they are displayed?

People themselves can say what they want/symbolize what they want, but I don't think it's appropriate for official flag waving.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Oh absolutely, public officials have no "freedom of speech" in their public statements and display of symbols. I would definitely agree that as a moral issue they _should_ remove the confederate flag.

[dhatchling.livejournal.com]

Part of the confusion is that people look too narrowly at the confederate flag instead of the whole picture.  They want to rid of the negativeness in the hopes that having only positiveness will make life better for all.  Therein lies the real problem: people çhoose to impose their beliefs onto others, which is in and of itself oppressive.  They then feel that the only way to counter that is to do the same in return.  Ergo, fight fire with fire.

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Yeah and the thing is, looking back on history, which, I'm a big history nerd, there's SO many examples of revolutions that begin is socially liberal but once they get into censorship and curtailment of other freedoms that they see as inherently of non-liberalness they quickly descend into an unteniable terror state... that's what was really remarkable about the American revolution, it was neither the first nor anywhere near the last socially liberal / republican / democratic revolutions, but their codification of a set of rules that could be implemented objectively to ensure freedoms and not to simply try to prop up their own specific values was truly remarkable.

[dhatchling.livejournal.com]

I'm reminded of the chicken and egg paradox. One can't have one without the other, but one can't know which one was first and which was second. One can therefore not know which one was right or which one was wrong. Therefore, put one in a coop and one in a basket, but keep them both in the coop. The chicken becomes the oppressed, while the egg becomes a basis for protein and cholesterol. The chicken is eventually eaten and becomes a posterboard animal as a baseline for how certain meat ought to taste.

[pundigrion.livejournal.com]

I think XKCD says this better than I can: https://xkcd.com/1357/

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Pretty much!