# Do believe in Freedom of Speech?



## isfpisfp (Sep 10, 2017)

I think a government with people having limited freedom is best so no


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## General Lee Awesome (Sep 28, 2014)

Free speech doesn't necessarily mean you can have hate speech

There are ways to express your ideas without resorting to hate speech. If you want to participate in a civilized society, then behave in such a way.

It is not hard to be critical of the government's policies without resorting to hate speech on groups of people.


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## General Lee Awesome (Sep 28, 2014)

Euclid said:


> Hate speech is free speech. The best way to deal with hate is to address the underlying causes of it, and banning speech on it will only cause the resentment to grow until it explodes in violence.


lol, if you can't express yourself in a proper way and have to resort to violence. You are not worthy to be part of our civilized society.


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## Denature (Nov 6, 2015)

General Lee Awesome said:


> lol, if you can't express yourself in a proper way and have to resort to violence. You are not worthy to be part of our civilized society.


Lol, if you can't handle people having offensive opinions then you should just leave.


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## ponpiri (Apr 30, 2017)

I "believe" in it in that it's a right that's afforded to us when we want to petition our government. Even if it wasn't written in the BOR, I would still support it.

"freedom of speech" AKA being a loud and ignorant asshole without any criticism from folks that don't agree with you? No. That's called being a hypocritical baby or a special snowflake, depending on which ridiculous forums you visit.


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## soop (Aug 6, 2016)

Yes.


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## General Lee Awesome (Sep 28, 2014)

Denature said:


> Lol, if you can't handle people having offensive opinions then you should just leave.


Or maybe you should be civilized? Have you tried that?


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## Potatooesunshinerays (Dec 26, 2017)

Yes and I will go as far as to say that it is a human right


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## Peter (Feb 27, 2010)

lossingmymind said:


> there is sometimes a very thin line between what constitutes freedom of speech and what is actually hate speech. so a provisional yes from me bearing in mind that we are all different and take offense to different thing


The concept of "freedom of speech" says nothing about the content of the speech. When a society decides that some things can't be said, this has no impact on the concept of "freedom of speech". It's the same thing as having the freedom to move around the country as you please. Doesn't mean you can just enter people's properties. The fact that you can't just enter people's properties, does not mean you don't have the freedom to move around the country as you please.


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## martinkunev (Mar 23, 2017)

Freedom of speech is one of the most important human values.

Everything significant humanity has achieved could only be possible through collaboration. People complement each other in their knowledge and experience and their different backgrounds often allow them to have diverse view points. Only with this diversity can we make good decisions when it comes to something that will affect everybody.

Speech is our tool to transfer information from one brain to another and without it collaboration wouldn't be possible. Information transfer is key to human success due to the differences between humans I described above. Information allows us to make predictions - e.g. if you're wondering how somebody would behave in a given situation, you could usually just ask them. Predicting consequences is what allows us to achieve goals.

Lack of freedom of speech would limit this whole process. Limiting freedom of speech inhibits the possibility to forsee problems and make good decisions. It can be argued that people have a natural need to express themselves and obstructing it would result in sadness, anger and conflict. Speech creates common knowledge and radically changes the behavior of people - e.g. politicians often resign once their dirty secrets become public knowledge.

I believe that given good education and understanding that every human has rights, people are willing to accept differences and don't need to impose their views on others. Good education means critical thinking so if everybody has freedom of speech and a free medium like the internet, it seems very unlikely for somebody to fool people into doing something wrong. Because of these things freedom of speech can not cause significant trouble.


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## Just Peachy (Jan 2, 2018)

Tough question. Freedom to express differing opinions is very important on one hand, but I wouldn't want to live somewhere where nobody had a filter and could lie, harass and insult with impunity.


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## shinedowness (Dec 11, 2017)

Please put in a "Yes and no" or "It depends on the situation" option. I do not find myself selecting either yes or no.


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## Wellsy (Oct 24, 2011)

https://empyreantrail.wordpress.com/2016/09/12/dialectics-an-introduction/


> An example of a simple yet concrete analysis of only the negative dialectical analysis of the understanding is a blog I once wrote on the concept of free speech. A simple summary of the analysis is that free speech is contradictory in its idea and its reality. Free speech, as a right, upon analysis leads us to ask what kind of speech actually enacts its condition of protection, and we find it is only dissenting speech of those in minorities or outside the status quo that actually fall under the need of such a protection of speech. Insofar as one speaks things in the acceptable range of popular or power discourse, there is no need for protection. The analysis moves forward and questions why speech—mere words—should give ground for censorship at all.
> 
> One finds that speech is not mere words—not just hot air—but is also activity with practical purpose to convey messages and create responses and actions. This action-related aspect of speech is what censorship aims to stop. If speech were mere words, nobody should ever fear speech, but speech has actual capacity to be a force that moves people to action, and action in the social sphere means real struggle for changing the dominant power and the structures of power themselves. Free speech, as it is known in the West, only protects dissenting speech as mere words, but it does not and cannot protect dissenting speech that aims to promote action to fundamentally change the status quo.
> 
> ...


A director like Christopher Nolan can close a bridge in a major city to film a movie by throwing a lot of money at it.
Protesters can be readily arrested and at most have only legal right within extremely restricted and non-threatening zone (freedom within acceptable limits isn't freedom at all).
Someone wealthy like Rupert Murdoch can profess his economies beliefs and preferences, but when people express their economic preferences at a WTO summit, they get gassed.
One should not be fooled by the formality and actually recognize the content of such things.
The formal freedom to do something isn't as significant in actuality it means a particular set of ideas amicable or tolerable by a ruling class as the actual freedom to resist the very limits put on one's actions that press against a status quo.
As such, freedom is only found in struggle.
104 Mill on Liberty (1990) - Rick Roderick


> _For Hegel, freedom is more like a placeholder word. Let me try to explain what I mean by that. For Hegel, freedom is so important that it is the meaning and the point of human history in general. That if one asks about the bible: “Quickly, what’s it about?”, someone will go “The devil did it”, right? And that’s a quick account of the plot. Then if you ask Hegel quickly about history, Hegel will go: “It’s about how freedom wins”._
> _Hegel’s account of freedom is more sophisticated in a way than any I have given you up until now, because it is deeply historical. Here’s what I mean by that. In any given historical epoch, Hegel says: “Show me the obstacles that Human beings saw in their path to realising their concrete goals and the overcoming of those obstacles will receive the name Freedom”._
> _Now, the nice thing about that concept of freedom is it is a free concept of it, which means it allows each generation to pursue freedom’s goals, maybe reformulating them anew. All I have done is backtrack the 19th Century, contrast positive and negative freedom… tried to do that. But the Hegelian concept is historical and reminds us that when we formulate these goals… they are the work of each new group that comes along in the struggle for freedom._
> _For Hegel, freedom isn’t either external or internal or positive or negative. Freedom is not something which people have, to quote _Alasdair MacIntyre_, “Hegel’s view of freedom is not something that people have. It is what they are”. When they don’t have it, they aren’t. And that doesn’t mean they disappear, it means they are not human without it._
> _And so, in Hegel, I think that for many satisfying reasons… and that’s why I am doing this here today… there are many satisfying reasons to bring the official history of ethics to a close with Hegel. In other words, Hegel’s view is kind of like the last trump. It says: you give me the best moral views that go out of your community, the limitations they face, wherever you happen to be and whenever they are, and the struggle to overcome those things… with those goals, that’s freedom. And I think that will give us… I agree with MacIntyre, that gives us the most satisfying view because it’s the most historical, and it also reminds us that there is no eternal idea of freedom, but only the struggle for freedom. Which is consistent with Martin Luther King’s remarks, because while he made remarks about freedom, the struggle for his kinds of freedoms and other people’s struggles as well; _Rosa Parks_, you know. Where struggles for certain direct freedoms that were the overcoming of concrete limitations of a given time and place._


In which case, I'm not always amicable to the formal freedom and see the practical effecet and tension of the actual freedom.
There can't be a true plurality of views except in a conflict for dominance, everything else must be to the wayside.
It's not the case that equilibrium is equal positions, but that one side dominates the other. 
Without such dominance, there is instability and conflict more openly.

There is a sense that censorship doesn't work to stop people's ideas, which is why less crude methods are more common these days so that even if one had access to certain ideas, they're interpreted through a particular lens that passifies the substance one might obtain otherwise.


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## brightflashes (Oct 27, 2015)

I do, but my definition is the same as what is written in the U.S. constitution. Some of the particulars of freedom of speech as outlined there are not followed in the United States. For example, inciting people to violence is generally seen as totally OK and most judges would laugh at you if you tried to bring a case before them like that. 

So, I had to vote "no", because I think there should be limits on hate speech, incitement to harm oneself or another, instructions on how to commit a crime or build a bomb, commit suicide, etc... should be regulated. For me, it's all or nothing. Since there are exceptions, I voted "no".

I also see that most people who voted "yes" also had exceptions. So, I'd imagine that depending on how one defines "free speech", I might be considered a "yes" voter.


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## Consistently Inconsistent (Feb 22, 2011)

Yes, and it is not a one way road. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to criticize people for what they say and do.


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## 481450 (Aug 13, 2017)

Yus!!!


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