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Comment by sbuk | Hacker News Reader

You have missed the point I'm making. I actually agree with what you say, but I'm suggesting taking a different point of view, and placing ethical and moral value on speech, by dropping the clearly emotive "free" and replacing it with "privelege". Why privelege? Because living in a society that values expression wouldn't function without being able to express ideas openly. I'm suggesting that the majority of people misunderstand the responsibility that comes with freedom of speech and that is what needs adressing.

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Calling it a privilege implies someone is capable of giving that privilege (and thus is also capable of taking it away). Free speech is a natural right, and has nothing to do with privilege, even if not every country recognizes this. This terminology is an extremely important distinction when it comes to defining the powers of government. It's not that the government is giving us the privilege of free speech: the government literally cannot limit our natural freedoms except in the manners described in the constitution where it has been authorized (by the people).

> placing ethical and moral value on speech

Ethics and morals are totally arbitrary, and are the last thing I want governing free speech. All we can do is let people exercise their free speech (or not), and decide whether or not to listen, etc. After all, it's only protection from the government, not from private businesses or individuals' reactions. The courts can decide if it falls under non-protected classes of speech like hate speech, etc.

The statement that free speech is a right is, itself, an ethical statement. Claiming that ethics is arbitrary is basically saying that free speech is inviolable is an arbitrary claim that holds no weight. I'm constantly annoyed by the unfounded post-modernist claims of arbitrariness and subjectivity in ethics. The truth is that ethicality is a "Hard Problem" of philosophy (also an oft-devalued field, but one without which there would be no math or science).

I agree with both you and Voltaire, that freedom of speech is an important right that is "inviolable". That is, it posible to infringe that right, but doing so is wrong, and infringement of free expression is ethically subject to defense against the aggression represented by that infringement. In short, even if you don't know what the fuck you're talking about with your use of the word "ethics", and even if you contradict yourself by saying that free speech is a right (an ethical claim) and that ethics "are totally arbitrary", I fully agree with your basic assertion that free speech is a right, and anyone who wants to claim otherwise had better be able to provide a valid, deductive argument from apodictisms (or at least agreeable axioms) -- especially because I can provide such an argument in support of free speech -- before I'll give that claim the time of day.

Just to restate, in brief:

1. Yes, you're absolutely correct in your statement that free speech is a right, and it should be defended, and not deprecated by claims it's a "privilege". Yes, there is responsibility associated with that right, but that doesn't make the right into a "privilege".

2. Your statement that free speech is a right is an ethical claim, so maybe you should re-examine your dismissal of ethics. Thanks in advance for thinking it through.

> 2. Your statement that free speech is a right is an ethical claim, so maybe you should re-examine your dismissal of ethics. Thanks in advance for thinking it through.

I don't see this is contradictory, but I guess I'm having trouble clarifying my thoughts here. I'm not discussing whether or not to have free speech; that was indeed an ethical and moral decision... that got decided already. I don't see the point in discussing that because 1) it got decided 244 years ago and 2) it's enshrined in the constitution. If I disagreed, my only realistic option is to move to another country.

What I was discussing was that I'm against the idea of laypersons or the [non-judicial] branches of government using the guise of "ethics" or "morality" to arbitrarily silence people. I don't see how free speech could be "revered" or similar without making arbitrary conditions.

> I'm against the idea of laypersons or the [non-judicial] branches of government using the guise of "ethics" or "morality" to arbitrarily silence people.

I agree with that position.

I'll totally accept that "privelege" the wrong way of phrasing it. However, philosophically the difference between what should be an invoidable right and weilding that right is decided by the commons, or at least it is how it is at the moment. I'm trying, admittedly poorly, to reframe that. Free speech comes with great power. That power is open to abuse. The times in which we live see the responsibility of weilding that power because disgregarded because it is an inalienable right. I'm saying that we have freedom of speech becasue of the societal structure that the Western hemisphere has, but it is being abused by the commons, the press and the state. If all don't show it the respect it deserves were are going to lose it, an the power that comes with it, in its very name.

We won't lose the right, period. It cannot be lost. Only the power to exercise it can be lost.

It's true that people are increasingly eager to infringe the right to express oneself freely by using government to curtail the power to exercise that right. It is true that exercising the right responsibly is important -- because failing to do so involves infringing other rights.

In short, there is good reason to differentiate between rights and powers, even though they may apply to the same things. The right is a matter of ethics, and any system of universal ethics doesn't change because of how people behave. The power to exercise a right is subject to social order, and if that power is curtailed the social order is, in that respect, unethical -- but how people behave may change the likelihood of the social order to change in that manner.

Again, point is totally missed! Simple terms, and perhaps a better way of framing my point. Whichever way you choose to look at it, freedom of speech is a responsibility granted by society that is taken too lightly. Society needs to reframe it.

> Ethics and morals are totally arbitrary, and are the last thing I want governing free speech.

>The courts can decide if it falls under non-protected classes of speech like hate speech, etc.Ethics and morals are totally arbitrary, and are the last thing I want governing free speech. All we can do is let people exercise their free speech (or not), and decide whether or not to listen, etc. After all, it's only protection from the government, not from private businesses or individuals' reactions.

Laws come from societal ethics and morality and the judiciary is part of the state/government.

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