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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: brushwud who wrote (201469)	9/14/2012 6:39:30 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 542004

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.

To: brushwud who wrote (201469)	9/14/2012 7:21:03 PM
From: Mary Cluney	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 542004

The concept of a right to free speech, which predates the United States and thus exists outside the body of laws deriving from the Constitution, to me is so fundamental to U. S. history and the U. S. government that I certainly don't accept it as being conditional like a speed limit or a tax rate. If that were repealed or circumscribed, then based on Locke, I'd have to be an outlaw in revolt against tyranny and no longer subject to "a contract". That is because you do not understand the concept of Free Speech. Free Speech is and has to be circumscribed. Examples: You can't shout fire (when there is no fire) in a crowded theater. You can't say "God Bless America" after you train a pit bull to kill when you say "God Bless America" . you can't Piss on, shit on, or set fire to a bible when there are a bunch of religious fanatics ready to kill you or people dear to you (you can scream Freedom of Speech all you want). Freedom of speech is a human construct and there are a lot of this and that's. It was not carved in stone by some supranatural force.