[redcarpet]

Freedom of speech also means hearing what you don't always want to hear.

Aren't you getting mixed up with the 'right to a platform'?

[Godstud]

Curtailing freedom of speech with technicalities isn't allowing freedom of speech. That's like saying you have freedom to speech but you can't say anything in public.

[Beren]

Your liberal friend isn't very liberal.

He doesn't really seem like real as well.

[redcarpet]

Curtailing freedom of speech with technicalities isn't
allowing freedom of speech. That's like saying you have freedom to
speech but you can't say anything in public.

So.....there's no such thing as harassment?

[Godstud]

You ignore the previous part where I agreed, providing no HARM is done. Telling everyone that Bill is a rapist is a lot different from telling everyone that instead of voting for Bill, you should vote for ______. Harassment is something separate from freedom of speech.

[redcarpet]

Really?

If I refuse to allow you onto my radio show, but you contact me again, a third time, a fourth time....that's
harassment.

[Cartertonian]

"Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." -- Thomas Jefferson

I'd like to say 'this' and leave it at that,

...but the problem with the 24/7 omnipresent media of all political pursuasions is that consumate idiots of all colours can - thanks to skewed misinterpretations of 'Freedom of Speech' say the most outrageous, scandalous things and, indeed can later be combated by reason - but that field of combat is often weeks or months down the line when all the fire has gone out of the debate and the resulting chastisement features in an inch-square box on page 24 of the newspaper where no-one will see it.

I don't know what the solution is. Shutting down shock-jocks, or poison-pen columnists or ratings-chasing tabloid TV editors is almost certainly not the answer, but it seems to me that the US 1st Amendment and UK freedom of speech laws are too ready to tolerate bare lies being peddled as truth simply because there is a mechanism in law to seek redress in some roundly ignored and instantly forgotten legal process a long way down the line. That's like saying murder and rape should be tolerated because there is a mechanism in law to seek redress in some roundly ignored and instantly forgotten legal process a long way down the line. The likes of Limbaugh et al are surely murdering and raping people's reputations and blighting their lives and aspirations with effective impunity, but because controling their output is seen as evil censorship they proliferate.

[Joe Liberty]

...but the problem with the 24/7 omnipresent media of all political pursuasions is that consumate idiots of all colours can - thanks to skewed misinterpretations of 'Freedom of Speech' say the most outrageous, scandalous things and, indeed can later be combated by reason - but that field of combat is often weeks or months down the line when all the fire has gone out of the debate and the resulting chastisement features in an inch-square box on page 24 of the newspaper where no-one will see it.

I think that's much less of a problem now that newspapers are going the way of the Dodo, and with the myriad of websites dedicated solely to weeding out the truth (themselves usually biased, but we're getting opposing views and getting them quickly).

I don't know what the solution is. Shutting down shock-jocks, or poison-pen columnists or ratings-chasing tabloid TV editors is almost certainly not the answer, but it seems to me that the US 1st Amendment and UK freedom of speech laws are too ready to tolerate bare lies being peddled as truth simply because there is a mechanism in law to seek redress in some roundly ignored and instantly forgotten legal process a long way down the line. That's like saying murder and rape should be tolerated because there is a mechanism in law to seek redress in some roundly ignored and instantly forgotten legal process a long way down the line.

I would never compare speech with murder or rape. One is thought made audible, the others are overt actions.

Also, I don't think free speech can be too free. I think of the old axiom, "better to release ten guilty men than imprison one innocent man," and apply that to speech: I would much rather risk the danger of hearing ten lies than to silence one truth.

The likes of Limbaugh et al are surely murdering and raping people's reputations and blighting their lives and aspirations with effective impunity, but because controling their output is seen as evil censorship they proliferate.

Again with the "murdering and raping" rhetoric... I don't think anybody's reputation has been sullied as much as Limbaugh's himself. Some of it deservingly so, some of it not. And you are always welcome not to listen to him. In fact it seems to me that when people complain about free speech in this context, they're not worried about what they might hear, they're assuming proxy for everybody else. Which is just another way of saying, "I'm smart enough to hear this stuff and decipher it, but nobody else is." Not saying that's your motivation, Carter, but I think that mindset does motivate a lot of people.