Should There Be Limits on Free Speech?
Statement
All speech that does not harm someone should be legal.
Q1 Analysis
This may be a Q1 violation if your definition of "speech" or "harm" leads to conflict with your other beliefs, or if there is speech you would like to penalize even though it hams noone.
Q2 Analysis
This is a Q2 violation if you would want to restrict some people’s speech more than your own.
Discussion
Before you can protect speech, you must decide what speech is. For the purposes of free speech, which of the following would you consider to be "speech"?
- Spoken words and sign language for the deaf.
- Gestures.
- Books, articles, and other writing.
- Art (sculpture, paintings, graffiti, photographs, dance, performance art, comic strips, etc., whether or not everyone agrees that it is art).
- Architecture.
- Advertisements and bumper stickers.
- Billboards.
- Skywriting and crops planted to form messages.
- T-shirts with messages on them.
- Fashion.
- Jewelry that incorporates symbols (religious or otherwise).
- Web sites and Internet forum postings.
- Refusing to speak.
Once you define what speech is, you must define what types of speech should be considered too harmful to be legal. Which of the following do you think should be legally protected speech?
- Swearing in public.
- Using made-up words such as "gosh darn it" and "jackhole" that are only reminiscent of swearing.
- Using a racial epithet or speaking out against a racial group.
- Using foul language in public because you have Tourette’s syndrome.
- Telling a bawdy joke in the cafeteria at work.
- Chatting around the water cooler when you are supposed to be working.
- Peacefully protesting the passage of a law.
- Violently protesting the passage of a law.
- Boycotting a business whose practices you do not approve of.
- Complaining about the government.
- Advocating the overthrow of the government.
- Blasphemy.
- Blasphemy against a religion you do not believe in.
- Slander.
- Intentionally spreading government propaganda.
- Mentioning those few scientific studies that support your company’s position but not mentioning that hundreds more are against your position.
- Writing a newspaper editorial that has a political bias.
- Telling a lie in court while under oath.
- Lying about the cause of a problem to avoid responsibility.
- Speaking disrespectfully to the police, your supervisor, or your parents.
- Slapping someone for speaking to you rudely.
- Discussing organizing a union with your coworkers.
- Inciting a riot.
- Trying to goad someone into hitting you.
- Teasing a man because of his weight.
- Criticizing a restaurant with full knowledge that it will likely cost the restaurant business.
- Throwing a tomato at a lying politician.
- Covering a house with toilet paper.
- Asking someone, "How’s the family?" in a way that implies that their family may be in danger if they cross you.
- Threatening to hit someone if they don’t shut up.
- Asking an airport security person if he wants to frisk you for hand grenades.
- Teaching high-school students something that you believe is true but that many people do not consider true.
- Teaching college students something that you believe is true but that many people do not consider true.
- Copying an essay on World War I from an encyclopedia and using a thesaurus to change a bunch of the words so your teacher won’t be able to say it’s plagiarism.
- Singing a popular song out loud after everyone on the bus has made very clear that they want you to stop.
- Yelling back at a movie in a theater.
- Yelling back at actors in a play.
- Shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater.
- Heckling a stand-up comic.
- Performing a parody of a popular song.
- Sampling a song in your rap performance.
- Pornographic magazines.
- Photographic child pornography.
- Hand-drawn child pornography.
- A photograph of your own naked baby.
- A tasteful photograph of a woman breast-feeding.
- A group of men meeting to discuss how the law could be changed to make pedophilia legal in some circumstances.
- Blowing a whistle during a football game so that players think the referee has signaled the end of a play.
- Cussing at your computer when you are home alone, unaware that the neighbors can hear you.
- Complaints about work written in your private diary.
- Complaints about work written on your anonymous public blog.
- A fantasy about blowing up your workplace, stored on your home computer.
You are encouraged to leave your answers to the questions posed in this post in the comments section. This post is based on an excerpt from Ask Yourself to be Moral, by D. Cancilla, available at LuLu.com and Amazon.com. See the 2Q system page for details of the philosophical system mentioned in this post.
on June 18, 2010 at 11:35 am
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I’m always particularly careful in my internet posting to throw in many many disclaimers to indicate that I’m discussing particular ideas or arguments, and not the personal qualities of the individual I’m having a dialogue with. One of the major principles of my own personal morality is respect for someone attempting to have a reasonable discussion. I’m pleased to have the opportunity to have discussions both with the blogger here on this site, as well as all the other people who comment. Having said all that, I’ll still try to intellectually cut an idea down if I disagree with it forcefully enough, I’ll just try to be precise enough in my argumentative stroke that I don’t injure the person who holds the idea I disagree with.
Not everybody agrees with that reasoning, though. Others can feel that winning the argument by any means necessary serves a greater good (and can be consistent, admiring those who have beaten them by similar means). Look at politics. Massive personal assaults, some of which may be baseless, in attempt to bring the greater ‘Vision’ into the capitol. There’s frequently a fine line between what is protected free speech and what is simple an act of con artistry.
It’s also not necessary not to harm anyone with one’s speech for it to be legal. A newspaper revealing the gory details of the BP oil spill, an influential movie critic panning a film, a spouse revealing an affair.
Free speech is one of the most cherished of American liberties, but its legal limits (let alone its moral limits) are often misunderstood. One form of speech brought up in the post I’d particularly like to bring up is discussions on internet forums. For the most part forums are private, meaning the forum owners and moderators are in charge. An unfortunately common misconception is that these forums are in some sense in the public realm and thus they can say whatever they please, and ‘censors’ who block them are somehow infringing on their rights. I have to say, I’m quite glad this isn’t true. The internet is enough of a minefield as it is. I don’t think anyone tries to keep track of the hurtful, hateful muck thrown about. Just look at the hate mail tag on this website alone. This is different than the broader issues of internet censorship such as that practiced in China that prevents the exposure of critical or dissenting ideas.
I suppose a question I would ask is the difference between what speech should be legal or illegal, and what speech would be moral or immoral?
on June 22, 2010 at 3:46 am
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I will take a quick stab. “Speech” is an act and not all acts should be free because acts have consequences that can result in forcibly taking from others.
Was this article stirred by the recent US Supreme Court decision that aiding a terrorist group, even if only for supposed peace negotiations is illegal but 3 judges voted against citing “Freedom of Speech”?
(this is my first post — how do you follow threads on this site?)