We can say the concept "exists", but like unicorns, you can't really touch it, can you? Without the agreement of the folks you live with, you have no right. I guess you can have it "exist" like some platonic ideal, but I don't buy that. I buy that it exists when people will recognize it, and it really doesn't exist when people won't. The idea has existence, but like the idea that everyone should have health care, it doesn't really matter, or have actual existence, until people do something about it.
So you find it so important that other people accept your "right" to free speech you'd withdraw from the "contract" if they didn't. But you don't really have any way to prove you have a right, so it really doesn't exist. You'll just take your marbles and go home. BFD Other people have taken their marbles and gone home over taxation, or the environment, or all sorts of other things. I'm not sure how anyone gets to a "universal" right of free speech when it's very clear nothing of the sort exists. You can have free speech if you live in a country ordered enough to tolerate it (and even then, there will be limits) and if you don't live in such a country, you won't have the right. So basically, when people who live around you will agree you have the right, you have it, and when they don't, you won't. All the rest of the claptrap is just pretty words to dress up an idea we'd like to imagine was universal. |
