There is a story, often told, that upon exiting the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer was: “A republic, if you can keep it.” The brevity of that response should not cause us to under-value its essential meaning: democratic republics are not merely founded upon the consent of the people, they are also absolutely dependent upon the active and informed involvement of the people for their continued good health.
No, it’s a fairly recent phenomenon, starting from the 1760ies or so in UK coffee houses and France’s pamphlet industry. People could and have been killed for lese majeste and similar verbal crimes before that and censorship was rampant.
No, because Marxism disguised as postmodernism.
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I read that people were arrested in Sweden and charged with ‘sedition’ for opposing immigration from the ME.
I concur that the achievement of freedom of speech is recent. I’d bet Socrates, Galileo etc… would have favored free speech.
Agreed. If casual fans of politics on here realize that freedom of speech is non negotiable, why can’t politicians in Europe and the US figure it out?
The seeds for the concept of the right to free speech were planted in ancient Athens with its early forms of democracy. Throughout the history of the West poets, artists, philosophers, religious figures, etc., have come up against government and religious forces for things they have said or written. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for heresy. Pico della Mirandola was charged with heresy and imprisoned. Thomas More was beheaded. Spinoza was shunned from the Jewish community for his beliefs and published works anonymously. So although free speech as a right as we know it is a recent phenomenon, people have been exercising speech at their own risk for much longer, because they believed it was a right in a way.
These rights were put in place to protect us from those very same politicians so it’s no wonder they would see them as an obstacle to the way they want to run things.
This is a much bigger problem than political parties(which are completely voluntary). We have a government that spans from Hawaii to Alaska to Maine to Florida. Three crimes were mentioned in the Constitution, and that document represented an expansion of government power. How many Federal Laws are there today? Thousands.
Ah, Sweden. They’re actually a very totalitarian society where any deviation outside the preset norms (allegedly super duper liberal but in reality postmodernist) is punished by social ostracism or worse, personified by that horrible word lagom meaning “just enough, but not too much”
When it comes to totalitarian aspects, such as removing cash or keeping young kids away from their parents, they’re coming up with exact same policies such as those progressive countries North Korea and Eritrea.
Well, we musn’t project all of our cultural norms onto ancients - while some may believe in free speech as a concept it was at best in very specific circumstances for a very limited set of individuals.
Really? Non negotiable? It seems they’re doing a stellar job of eroding that freedom and making it negotiable and appropriate only in very specific circumstances (the walled garden principle)
Yes, they have been burned/shunned etc. but not for the right of universal free speech per se - their voices were stifled for a myriad of reasons. The principle of universal free speech pretty much took off only with the advent of proto-Enlightement.
Yes, but let’s not project too much our idealistic modern day assumptions onto ancients with sometimes vastly different social norms. That often idealized Athenian democracy was a mixture between an elite gentleman’s club and Fight Club with brawls, murders, stabbings an regular riots while today Socrates and Cicero would be serving lifetime without parole for being sex offenders.
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Yes, but they suffered for believing they should have had the right to free speech. That tradition of people dying for saying what they believe inspired the idea of free speech as a protected right. Part of that is the tradition of believing we should be able to question authority. With Thomas More you have him questioning whether or not a king has the right to force someone to violate his religious convictions. So a king’s authority stops where God’s authority begins. The arguments for an individual’s right to free expression begins with people like that.
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Weird, I saw a clip this morning on Yahoo Finance where Cuban was asked about running and, while he said he’s decided nothing yet, he would do it as an independent.
Then, just now, a pundit referenced Steve Bannon saying he is talking to Mark Cuban about running in 2020 as a democrat.
So… clear as mud. He’ll probably run for the Indepderepublicrategreen Party.
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https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/mcconnell-joins-ryan-walking-back-211837071.html
This is pathetic.
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Also this - the President of the world’s foremost superpower is upset that some very bad people have offended Vladimir. Regarding the second sentence, is the perennial alpha male afraid Vladimir’s gonna get angry?
“Every time he sees me he says: ‘I didn’t do that,’ and I really believe that when he tells me that, he means it. But he says: ‘I didn’t do that’,” he added, saying he believed the Russian president was “very insulted by it, which is not a good thing for our country”.
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“No,” Putin’s press secretary Dmitri Peskov told CNN when asked, “as far as you know, did the two leaders discuss meddling?"
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That’s like a player shutting down a needy girlfriend in public who’s desperately looking for a sign of affection.
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I find it disheartening that the same people whom feel it necessary to put on “pussy hats” to protest rights they already have protected by law, and whom love to call trump every possible thing including a Nazi tyrant, would support a law that gives his administration the power to deem something “hate speech”.
It’s FUBAR.
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It’s actually called Hypocrisy of the Highest Order, Beans…
And the Left AND the Right seem to be oblivious to it. In fact; both “sides” only “Double-Down” whenever called on it.
It drives me Bat-Shit Crazy…
Of course we can trust Vlad look at that face. Does he look like a guy that lies??? Cmon that KGB stuff is all in the past.
Not…
Either hes Vlads secretly abused gay lover or hes deathly afraid to say something bad about Putin. I wonder why?
Sure. Agreed, but I think only calling it that underscores the absolutely frightening implications.
I’m honestly scared of people that on one hand can call a POTUS “Hitler” yet would implement laws that make said POTUS able to throw one in prison for words they said.
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Well hyper partisans never mind when their “side” has powers they shouldn’t.
Then they lose their friggin minds when an opponent wins an election.
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