That’s why I used the word “if”. It’s a conditional set of thoughts that follow from accepting a premise.
My point is that free speech is not just a thing government does. Free speech is a thing like … eating. There are laws about food, but eating is a real-world phenomenon. It exists independent of government and any laws that may control or shape how people eat.
Free speech is a state of affairs. Like “war” or “party” or “rainstorm”. Free speech is an attribute of a social environment, in which a person is free to speak.
“Free to speak” can mean many different things:
It can mean having a mouth and knowledge of a language
It can mean not being physically gagged. As in “When the killer removed the gag and he was free to speak again, he said ‘you can kill me but then you won’t get the gold’”
It can mean sitting at the dinner table knowing your parents can hear about the ugly parts of your inner life without suddenly getting angry and punishing you
If can mean disinhibited, like closeness or new trust in a person allows you to open up to them
It can mean not targeted for punishment by your boss for talking about salaries with coworkers
It can mean not facing ostracization from your neighborhood for revealing that your gay
It can get more extreme and mean not being beaten up or killed for telling people you’re gay
It can mean not going to jail for publishing articles about the USA being corrupt
Basically free speech can exist or not exist legally, physically, culturally, socially, organizationally, and psychologically.
It is true that organizational free speech, like companies that can fire you at will for saying something, is a different domain than legal free speech, like the government putting you in jail for criticizing the president.
The term “free speech” can, and does, in this conversation (as in the whole meta conversation between the Two Sides on the issues of free speech being discussed right now), refer not only to the governmental role in protecting or squashing free speech, but also to the state of affairs within groups of friends, within families, within cultures, neighborhoods, and companies.
Saying that “My government doesn’t protect free speech” only covers like 5% of the ground. Yes you’re legally allowed to either promote or oppose the non-legal, cultural atmosphere of free speech around you, as you see fit.
But there’s so much more to discuss. Now that we know the government is not going to force anyone to allow anyone else to speak freely around them, without doing all the legal things they want to “discourage” (ie punish) that kind of speech, such as firing, shunning, gossiping, then the question arises: is it right to do so? Is it healthy? What are the pros and cons of free speech as a cultural atmosphere?
That’s why I used the word “if”. It’s a conditional set of thoughts that follow from accepting a premise.
My point is that free speech is not just a thing government does. Free speech is a thing like … eating. There are laws about food, but eating is a real-world phenomenon. It exists independent of government and any laws that may control or shape how people eat.
Free speech is a state of affairs. Like “war” or “party” or “rainstorm”. Free speech is an attribute of a social environment, in which a person is free to speak.
“Free to speak” can mean many different things:
Basically free speech can exist or not exist legally, physically, culturally, socially, organizationally, and psychologically.
It is true that organizational free speech, like companies that can fire you at will for saying something, is a different domain than legal free speech, like the government putting you in jail for criticizing the president.
The term “free speech” can, and does, in this conversation (as in the whole meta conversation between the Two Sides on the issues of free speech being discussed right now), refer not only to the governmental role in protecting or squashing free speech, but also to the state of affairs within groups of friends, within families, within cultures, neighborhoods, and companies.
Saying that “My government doesn’t protect free speech” only covers like 5% of the ground. Yes you’re legally allowed to either promote or oppose the non-legal, cultural atmosphere of free speech around you, as you see fit.
But there’s so much more to discuss. Now that we know the government is not going to force anyone to allow anyone else to speak freely around them, without doing all the legal things they want to “discourage” (ie punish) that kind of speech, such as firing, shunning, gossiping, then the question arises: is it right to do so? Is it healthy? What are the pros and cons of free speech as a cultural atmosphere?