What Kind of Speech Needs Protection?

I’m always torn by this. Is it OK then for individuals (or media) to encourage acts of violence or hatred? I noticed one of the signs said that killing an abortion doctor is not a crime. When these ideas come into action, are we not responsible for them?

I know we shouldn’t stop people from voicing differing opinions, but we 2PC people for saying “I want to kill me” or “I want to kill you”. Is it any more sane, any more safe, for people to be saying “I want you to kill _____” or “____ does not deserve to exist”?

Do we protect bullying, harassment, and verbal violence as “free speech” in order to show that we’re tolerant of dissent?

It’s plain and simple: we should all have the right to say whatever we want, so long as it doesn’t infringe upon the rights of anybody else.

Basically, calling for violence infringes upon the right to live of whomever the violence is called again. Yelling out “Fire!” in a movie theater infringes upon the rights of people in that theater by causing hysteria and rampant fear and a possible situation resulting in injuries or even death (trampling).

And I’m talking real rights, not the so-called “right” to not be offended, or the imagined infringement of rights (such as false claims of persecution).

Just as much as the legal right to free expression and speech, is support for those who are putting their lives on the line by speaking out. I have posted about this before, but it seems fitting to mention it again. We need to support people like Molly Norris, who had to go into hiding, or Lars, who had to hire security and had his house firebombed. If these brave people have to stand alone, and shoulder the entire burden (it’s financially devastating as well as emotionally stressful), pretty soon no one will be willing to make the sacrifice of speaking out, and the right to free speech will be meaningless. I think a non profit providing material support for those who have found themselves under a fatwah or otherwise threatened for speaking out, would be a good start. I’m no organizer, but I am thinking of getting one started via Kickstarter. anyone with any ideas can email me, I wi ll need all the help I can get.

@Kate

I think you are equating speech and action. If you to kill your mother, and you do it, who is responsible for the act?

Words and thoughts are just that, words and thoughts. Actions you can be held accountable for. Speech is free.

Dave,
There is more than one issue here. Freedom of speech is one thing, invasion of privacy is another. Phelps is and should be allowed to say “American soldiers get killed because of the US attitude to homosexuality” However that does not give him the right to say it anywhere (in a library where there is a silence rule for example). Nor does it allow him to stalk particular individuals and invade their privacy with signs and megaphones or whatever.
There are always limits on free speech, but as long as you can publicly say what you want then your right to free speech is not being stopped.

It seems so simple, doesn’t it: unpopular speech should be protected.

But in these days of protests over Koran burnings and 9/11 mosques it is harder to find people who truly support it. The refrain of “sure they have the right but we have the right to protest it” is true, but hardly fitting in a nation that values open free speech.

It is for this reason that I not only support the right of both things mentioned but actively encouraged them to go ahead. It causes me no harm and causes them pleasure, presumably, so the world is a better place if they do it.

NB. Offence [UK] doesn’t count as harm.

I’m almost always disappointed with the winners of these things. Am I the only one that thinks that sucked, was very lazily produced and went too far in speech it thought should be protected?

I’m kind of with Kate and Dave, definitely Dave. Phelps needs to be stopped. As sailor further puts it, he has the right to say what he’s saying but not by disrupting soldiers funerals.

Of course, it’s a ridiculous stretch to extend such limits to blasphemy or any other idea that is just an expression of speech. However, while we should be free to criticize Islam and draw pictures of Mohammed, we should not be free to harrass a particular mosque say by standing outside it with offensively worded signs or cartoons of Mohammed.

And where exactly does inciting to riot, etc., kick in? I don’t think it should be an issue if someone says in anger at another person, oh, I could just strangle them. It’s an expression. We’ve probably all used it without meaning it. But that’s quite a different thing from shoot all abortion doctors or kill the cops.

Every freedom has limits. We don’t have the free speech to show children pronography and we shouldn’t. We don’t have the free speech to yell fire in a crowded theater and we shouldn’t. We don’t have the free speech for false advertising, slander, libel, lying under oath, sexually harrassing the secretary and so on.

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to curtail it when applied to people like Phelps or people listing doctor’s names on web sites calling for their death because they do abortions.