Talk:Essay: Freedom of speech

A few thoughts

Hm, an interesting and thought-provoking essay, I'll give you that. However, I frowned a few times while reading it, and I genuinely hope that you can blow my concerns out of the water:

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So, in my opinion, freedom of speech... ...gives one the right to argue that some people are inferior to others (such as racism), but does not give them to right to treat or speak of others as inferior

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Could you maybe explain how you can argue that some races are inferior without speaking of them as inferior? I don't get this one. If anything, this sounds like a very fine semantic difference, and I'm really not sure that I'm comfortable with that.

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...gives one the right to argue that swearing is acceptable, but does not give them the right to swear. ...gives one the right to argue that offensive works of art are acceptable, but does not give artists the right to produce or display offensive art.

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And who decides what is acceptable or offensive? What counts as swearing (this sounds silly, but depending on who you ask, you get radically different replies)? You're opening the floodgates for people like the nutcases who wanted to ban Harry Potter books.

I can see where you're coming from, but maybe you didn't think this one through all the way. Or maybe I didn't - if you can point out where I'm missing something, please do so! It's likely that you put more thought into this than I did, after all.

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But the point is that the freedom-of-speech principle is the right to express (or argue) a view on something, whether that "something" is related to speech (e.g. swearing) or not.

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Doesn't this completely negate the entire "offensive art (which usually is an expression of a view) is not covered by freedom-of-speech" thing? I think you're using "express(ion)" a bit too loosely because you now use it both for "expression of a view" (covered) and "artistic expression" (not always covered). --DirkB 20:42, 6 September 2008 (EDT)