Free Speech absolutism does not exist | Thoughts #35

For the past week a lot of ‘stop insulting’ and ‘freedom of speech’ has been going on. There are two observations that are not so conspicuous, first is that what does one mean by ‘freedom of speech’ and second why shouldn’t insults be allowed. Now I’m going to talk about this issue in-line with the recent French controversies, which I’m sure most of you are aware of. I won’t go into the religiosity of it, but will elaborate on the secular premise.

Most people talk about concepts such as ‘Freedom of Speech’ and or ‘Freedom of Expression’ like its a Divine law, as if some deity (with the connotation that a deity is the ultimate source of knowledge) came chanting its song. “Human rights are considered the offspring of natural rights, which themselves evolved from the concept of natural law. Natural law, which has played a dominant role in Western political theory for centuries, is that standard of higher-order morality against which all other laws are adjudged. To contest the injustice of human-made law, one was to appeal to the greater authority of God or natural law.” The reason why you must understand the roots of Human Rights is so that you put on your critical lenses, and not take those laws for granted, as they themselves aren’t free from ideologues.

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You have an opinion and that’s not fine | Thoughts #25

Ah, don’t we all live in a free society overflowing with the sentiments of freedom of expression and speech. Ample amount of channels capitalising on this exercise exist too, Twitter, Facebook, IG, and the the good old Reddit. We are allowed to express our opinion, with that opinion when needed to be pushed onto the ruling state we have freedom to protest, but it all stops with the nonexistence of freedom to overthrow a government, sounds unsettling I know, but what that entails is that there is an end to all the opinions. Aside from the division in the population of opinion which thus creates a barrier in ever thinking about reformation, nowhere does it say that people are free to overthrow their government, unless of course US intervenes.

If opinions matter such that everyone is entitled to their own opinion that entitlement means nothing for that it will never manifest, but that the ones already in place use the mentioned statement as a disapproval. It troubles me when people think that having opinions is fine, we hypocritically disregard certain opinions for that their merit effects the ground reality, elections are a good example. You don’t vote for a certain party because their opinions will manifest in ways that you don’t want, but, also to consider is the fact that the supporters of that party don’t want your opinions to manifest, this entails to a simple mostly unrecognised fact that just because you have an opinion doesn’t mean its right and neither it is fine to have it if that’s the case, and if it’s the opposite, then well your own opinion was in the wrong and that’s not fine either.

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