" I don’t give a rat’s ass about the free speech rights of the government...the purpose of free speech is to protect the right of the weak to speak even when the strong disagree with them."
That doesn't sound right to me. You basically just argued "The purpose of a right to free speech is to protect the right of free speech." It's circular reasoning. Why should free speech be a right?
Out of curiosity I pulled up an article in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
One principle put out by John Stewart Mill is that free speech is valuable because it leads to the truth. If this is correct you should arguably be concerned if the government can't engage in it because we will all be lead away from the truth.
The article says "... arguments show that one of the main reasons for justifying free speech (political speech) is important, not for it's own sake but because it lets us exercise another important value (democracy)."
So if we accept this then if censoring the strong undermines democracy it could be bad, especially if they became strong because the weak elected them into office to represent them.
The article quotes someone who says "Speech, in short, is never a value in and of itself but is always produced with the precincts of some assumed conception of good."
In other words, don't argue free speech is good because free speech is good.
> That doesn't sound right to me. You basically just argued "The purpose of a right to free speech is to protect the right of free speech." It's circular reasoning. Why should free speech be a right?
That's not what GP argued, and you're being quite uncharitable. Their argument goes something like this:
1) Free speech is meant to protect those that don't have a monopoly on speech
2) The government has a monopoly on—or can coerce—speech (because it taxes you, appoints the judges, has a police force, etc.)
3) Therefore, protecting the free speech of the government is not really a stewardship of free speech
This argument makes sense and is not circular. The definition of free speech doesn't even come into play (and is in fact assumed to be desirable: after all, it's in the Bill of Rights.)
So the judicial branch is and is not quite the government, and the government has a mnonopoly on speech even though they can't say things, and I'm being uncharitable by finding this argument less than coherent. Got it.
> (1) So the judicial branch is and is not quite the government, and (2) the government has a mnonopoly on speech even though they can't say things
On (1): yes, that's the idea behind the independent role of the judiciary. They're supposed to be quis custodiet ipsos custodes. Sometimes, it doesn't work out, but usually it does. I'll concede that there's gray area here, but not quite enough to make the argument non-coherent.
On (2): the government can definitely say things (the White House literally has a Communications Director), but also (and more importantly) both stifle and coerce speech. I'm not sure how you came to this second conclusion.
My issue is your claim the government has a monopoly on speech, not your other claims.
Imagine I'm a visitor from mars and you tell me the government has a monopoly on speech. I say, fascinating, so only the government is allowed to talk?
And you say, well no, anybody can talk, generally.
And I say, oh, do you mean the government does the majority of the talking?
And you say no, most talking is done by private individuals.
And I say oh, do you mean the government decides what people can say?
And you say no, no exactly, see there's these people called judges who are not quite the government who prevent the government from deciding what people can say.
> My issue is your claim the government has a monopoly on speech, not your other claims.
Ah gotcha, yeah maybe that's too strong of a premise. You can probably fix it by saying "potential monopoly" or something in the vein of "it would be easiest for the government to monopolize speech," as historically, freedom of the press was meant to counter or criticize strong central governments (e.g. monarchies).
From a constitutional perspective (which is the perspective Supreme Court Justices swear to have), the ability of the government to limit speech is not allowed. Full stop. Sources below.
First Amendment to the Constitution:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Constitutional Oath taken by all current Supreme Court Justices:
"I, _________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God."
"From a constitutional perspective (which is the perspective Supreme Court Justices swear to have), the ability of the government to limit speech is not allowed. Full stop. Sources below."
The Supreme court has never said anything like what you just typed in 200+ years of american history. Do you type this every day, constantly knashing you teeth at the existence of trade secret laws, copyright laws, libel laws, and the like, or does the rheteric come out in service of special goals?
Wow what a jerk. I'm going off the Constitutional Oath, which all judges take. Obviously they use judicial discretion but be charitable for a second and at least try to understand my point, which is that deviating from what the Constitution says is the very rare exception, not the rule.
The spirit of free speech is to protect saying things that are either unpopular or inconvenient to the powerful. Speech that is popular or convenient to the powerful needs no such protection! Even in the most repressive states you can still praise the party or the dear leader.
The truths that we need free speech to find are not the congenial truths, but the inconvenient ones.
Yes, I do think that whoever is today's top dog doesn't need defending today. The alternative is just using power to crush the powerless which- I mean okay, that's a normal human reaction but I think it is beneath our aspirations as a country.
It's also not free speech if it's only for some. The government is a very important player in our society, we depend on them being able to speak freely!
I just don't understand how you can think this. If I profess my religion in a private capacity, that's a rightful exercise of my freedom of speech and religion.
If I profess those same beliefs while acting in a public capacity I am infringing on the rights of others by favoring or creating the impression of favoring a particular religion.
You individually have freedom of association. If you don't like gay people, or Vietnamese people, or MAGA republicans - ultimately nobody can make you be friends with them in your private life. However, acting in an official capacity you're absolutely obliged to be neutral.
The government very rightly has restrictions on how partial it can be as it is the arbiter of our society.
To be clear we’re not talking about the government speaking freely. They do so and with seeming impunity for bs relative to their position of authority.
We’re talking about the government coercively censoring speech of citizens in/on the media, not under emergency orders or commandeering, but as a matter of routine. Yes they’ve always done this even with the major news networks thirty or forty years ago (pre-Internet). It was wrong then just like it’s wrong now. It’s more visible and obvious now to more people, the evidence is right in front of us through leaks and email disclosures from efforts like the Twitter files.
You're reading this wrong, they're not saying that free speech shouldn't be a right but that "free speech is important because it protects free speech" isn't very useful when trying to evaluate whether the government itself ought to also have or not have free speech protections.
Is free speech important solely because it protects you against a malicious government and therefore there's no issue at all with non-government entities censoring others' speech and no reason for the government itself to have it? Or is it important because the marketplace of ideas confers some societal benefit and it would be better if agents of the government were equal participants in that market?
I think you might be reading something that's not there. Asking the question doesn't imply an answer. And it's probably better if people can answer it rigorously rather than just repeat the claim because everyone else does.
That doesn't sound right to me. You basically just argued "The purpose of a right to free speech is to protect the right of free speech." It's circular reasoning. Why should free speech be a right?
Out of curiosity I pulled up an article in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
One principle put out by John Stewart Mill is that free speech is valuable because it leads to the truth. If this is correct you should arguably be concerned if the government can't engage in it because we will all be lead away from the truth.
The article says "... arguments show that one of the main reasons for justifying free speech (political speech) is important, not for it's own sake but because it lets us exercise another important value (democracy)."
So if we accept this then if censoring the strong undermines democracy it could be bad, especially if they became strong because the weak elected them into office to represent them.
The article quotes someone who says "Speech, in short, is never a value in and of itself but is always produced with the precincts of some assumed conception of good."
In other words, don't argue free speech is good because free speech is good.