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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (68050)	11/25/2002 5:56:42 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 82486

At the risk of appearing to flatter, which I would never do <g>, I agree almost completely. I'm not sure what you mean by saying that free speech has "nothing to do" with the decision process whether to speak or not. Surely it does. If there is no free speech, the decision process either doesn't exist at all or is severely curtailed. As you say, "the issue is judgment about when to engage one's right to free speech and when not to." But that implies that free speech has something to do with how your judgment comes out. Presumably, X exerted some form of judgment before she wrote what she did. She made a decision, maybe not well thought through but still a decision, whether to write it or not. And part of her decision, equally presumably, was based on the fact that she had the right to say it if she chose to. I agree with you (at least I assume I agree with you, though you didn't specifically say this) that I wish her judgment had exerted itself not to say those things. But obviously it didn't. Her judgment obviously had the major impact on her choice of whether to say it. But to say free speech has nothing to do with it is, I think, an error.