Freedom of Speech

Is this an absolute freedom?

- Specifically the expression of speech
- Private entities are excluded
- Do governmental entities have the right?

Why, or why not?

 

What is considered speech? Is giving an order to kill someone speech? If freedom of speech is absolute and saying an order counts as speech does that mean you can not be prosecuted for giving the order to murder someone?

 

Depends on who gave the order to kill whom, no?

 

Freedom of speech is a privilege unless people have a right that restricts your privilege. You are not free for example to shout fire in a movie cinema when there is no fire (a classic example). 'Absolute' freedom of speech implies that no one has a right to restrict your speech. This should be manifestly untrue. If you disagree I could delete some of your posts on Sythe against your will to demonstrate it (unless you don't consider your posts to be 'speech') - of course I'd probably be told off my other staff or you might say you consented so its not really a restriction, but you get the idea.

I'm really liking the Hofheldian approach to analyzing rights; I'm surprised I haven't come across it sooner.

 

At first read this seemed logical and poetic, but I find it flawed upon further inspection.


Example 1: You're some big human trafficker about to off a loose end so you tell your gunman to take care of it.


In this situation it’s irrelevant whether or not your freedom of speech should be protected as you were putting things into place and being a


Example 2: A random human trafficker calls you on skype and asks if he should kill some guy; You tell him to do it.


Here i don't really have a problem with it because even if he wouldn't have shot him by your request, you're a single variable in a chain of events that transpired to arrive at that outcome. Your only interaction with the situation was verbal.


Example 3: You're the supreme leader of some shit country and you execute 2000 people because they dispute your divine right of king.


In this scenario you set your own rules so you're above having rights that need protecting and you accept the possible consequences.


Example 3.1: You’re the president of some shit country and you execute 2000 people because they dispute your socioeconomic policies.


If you were elected fairly and were given this power I don’t see any personal wrongdoing. It’s important in this one to remember that the problem is with the system, not the individual. Because your power is derived from an overarching system you shouldn’t be held personally accountable for reckless policymaking.


Example 3.2: Same as above but you are the recently appointed führer of an economically unstable country and you scapegoat and execute hella jews for basically nothing.


Because you intentionally disillusioned the public this one is pretty reprehensible but before you had totalitarian power you should have been protected.


Example 4: You berate someone on a daily basis until they drink bleach and die.


Assuming both people are mentally accountable adults, it’s done on private property, and we assume it’s purely a verbal interaction I’d say you should be protected.


In the above situations it’s clear to me that there is a clear divide between an exercise of free speech, and a trail of actions with questionable morality that climaxes in a command that you could comically portray as free speech.

 

What if the person says "Go do that thing, wink wink."? If that is not protected speech than why couldn't the government arrest someone who encouraged people to protest and say that protest was code for riot?

 

I see nothing immediately wrong with encouraging people to riot as long as your message was spread purely by your words.

 

OP has been updated slightly.

I am focused on expression of ideas, nothing else.

Your example may begin with speech, but if you are in a position of authority you are effectively controlling that individual and practically committing that act via proxy.

Why is freedom of speech a privilege? Is it not a negative right that has to be protected rather than a positive right that is provided to the individual?

Why am I now free to shout such a claim? What does truthfulness have to do with my ability to state what I want?

It indeed implies that. Why should another individual have. Aright to restrict another's speech?

Your comparison of Sythe posts is inherently flawed due to the private nature of Sythe. Sythe is a private entity and we are operating at the behest of the owner of Sythe (and one's appointed to act in part of him) can do what they wish within his world (in this case, his website).

 

So you're characterizing it as a freedom from others not allowing me to say what I want? The logical implication is that therefore I can say what I want without others preventing me from doing so (if the right is absolute).

Your privilege is overruled by the private property owners who may restrict your speech for whatever reason they want. Truthfulness is irrelevant.

See what you said below. Why does Sythe have the right to restrict my speech on the website? Your answer will be because he owns Sythe.org. Both rights - his right to exclude and my right to free speech - cannot be absolute. Are you saying Sythe is under a duty to allow me to say what I want EVEN THOUGH it is his private property? Or are you maintaining that I am under a duty obey Sythe's rules, and failing that he has the right to exclude me from his site, for reasons including saying things he doesn't like whether they are truthful or not?

I should have clarified that the cinema is also private property, and so there is an implied term on entry that you don't shout out things like that. Anyway, you're saying private property owners can restrict the negative right of mine to say what I want? That doesn't sound like an absolute right to freedom of speech to me then.


Hofheld argues that the correlative of a right is a duty. If there is a right to freedom of speech (whether you couch it as positive or negative), what do you propose the duty is, unless you contend there is no duty?

 

How is that not a double standard? At what point does encouraging something become a crime? Looting? Beatings? Executions? Genocide?

 

The difference is that very rarely can any of these things be purely verbal. If i upload videos that tell people to riot but I don't attend or physically try to induce the riot in some other way (recruitment, funding, attending a meeting, etc.) I do not believe, however, that someone should be held accountable for what people other people do with the message you broadcast. However, if you make a youtube channel and accrue a decent amount of subscribers and one day decide to tell them to lynch one of your enemies. I could see how you would be at fault in this case. The major problem i see with this is that you leveraged power that you already had for your own personal benefit. This is a tough distinction to put into writing, but it all seems very logical when I’m able to analyze individual situations.


If i tell you to rob a bank and you rob that bank, where am I at fault? I didn't drive you there, nor did I assist you in the robbery. I can't see how in this scenario the person who made the decision to actually rob the bank wouldn't be at fault.


I’m not saying that people should have the right to be in public and tell people to riot because the right to protest publicly is a privilege given to you by your government. There should be limits placed on what you can say in certain situations, but at the end of the day if you wanted to go home from work and hop on the internet to tell everyone to mass genocide the asians, it would be fine with me.

 

I don't really understand what you are trying to portray in this. I am characterizing speech as something that cannot be infringed by a governmental entity. I should make the OP clearer, but I am not interested in discussing freedom of speech in relation to private ownership since that would offset two rights against one-another.

Again, not interested in private property scenario. Such a scenario attempts to juxtapose the right of a property owner against the right of someone on their property. The quote you provided is in reference to public harm/disturbance and has little-to-nothing to do with the actual location of the individuals.

This comes down to my OP not being clear enough since I did not assume there would be this rush to use private ownership as a justification (I was/am particularly focused public/governmental).

Anyway, the scenario above I would side with the owner having the right to regulate their own property, but again (I sound like a broken record) this was not what I was going for. I am not attempting to juxtapose rights to one-another for a brawl of which is more important, property, or speech.

Negative rights refer to the rights that must be protected by a government, they have nothing to do with private businesses.

The differentiation of a positive and negative right is quite important considering one is provided to the individual and the other is protected.

I don't agree with that argument and do not find a right and a duty all-that-comparable. Rights will obviously differ depending on the rights in question, but an individual is not obligated to fulfill the rights; rather, they simply have to be provided.

 

Although I understand now that you're not referring freedom of speech in private circumstances, I don't think it's correct to say that the two rights are offset against one another.


I prefer this distinction: Claim rights and liberty rights - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Than the distinction between positive rights and negative rights: Negative and positive rights - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I don't think this is true, especially re positive rights, and also re negative rights. If I have a positive right to healthcare, someone is obligated to fulfill that right. Someone has to pay the monies for the hospitals, doctors, etc. Even for negative rights, this is true. If I have a negative right in relation to freedom of speech, that means that others are prohibited from acting in a way that impinges on my freedom of speech. What happens if someone does impinge my freedom of speech? You say that governments therefore must protect that, but then that in itself is a positive duty on the governments behalf to protect your negative right (once we establishes it exists, whether absolute or not). Given government has a positive duty to protect your negative right, the obligation is in the same position as a positive right to healthcare. The government being under a duty to protect your negative rights must give money to the police and courts in order to enforce your negative right.

This is why when you said:

Although that may be true, the phrase 'must be protected by a government' necessarily implies a duty on the governments part (note the correlative of a right giving rise to a duty). Accordingly, if I have a negative right, and the government has a duty to protect my negative right, then if someone impinges my negative right, I automatically have a positive right to see that the government enforce the breach of my negative right.


Although this doesn't answer your question re the extent of our 'right to freedom of speech', it is extremely important to frame what that right to freedom of speech entails. I'm of the view that it is a liberty right (a privilege), and that you can say whatever you want unless someone has a claim right against you (example, private property owners). The enforcement of your privilege however is a separate issue entirely, and if you claim governments must protect our freedom of speech, necessarily that means we have a positive right to see such protection be carried out. I'm not sure however, which issue you want to hone in on?

It's an interesting question, another one being the 'right to privacy'.