On the subject of Freedom of Speech!

Freedom of Speech is a very challenging issue. One of the reasons it is challenging is because people often use language in very hostile or abusive ways.

Should people be allowed to say whatever it is that they wish to say? Of course, that is something protected by the 1st Amendment of The Constitution of America!

I can’t imagine many circumstances where it would be better if people did not say what is on their mind.  However there do seem to be many reasons to avoid speaking one's mind in certain circumstances.

People are often uninformed about the topics they discuss, often prejudiced, often shortsided, often ignorant and smallminded. People are biased to the bone. There may be a few more open minded people in the world but all in all people are often just beginning their intellectual hike up the mountain of the actual. In fact it seems that really it takes a lot of work to increase your vertical position on the mountain.

Many people are simply ignorant as shit. It doesn’t stop them from having an opinion.  In fact sometimes the most ignorant and asshole-ish are also the loudest and most aggressive.  Sometimes people just use violence to compensate for a total lack of brains.

And so often an argument with an ignorant asshole results in a violent confrontation that ends poorly for one or both the participants. There are actually countless reasons to not exercise one’s right to free speech, because diplomacy can diffuse a conflict before it even begins.

There are arguments worth having and arguments that are a waste of time.

Sigh. We should not tolerate censorship of ideas. We should not censor people for their viewpoints.

What is better? A world where people are openly racist or a world where people are racist but are not allowed to show anyone or to inform anyone openly to the nature of their racism?

Just hiding the racism does not cure it… in fact the racism just festers beneath the bandage and eventually the puss leaks out anyway and it has become all the more foul as it cultures in its confinement.

Should not the grievances be addressed?

Should not the wound be examined so it can be disinfected?

The desire for racism to vanish does not cause racism to go away. For all the efforts of those who wish to see equality there remains the bitter sections who shall never see eye to eye under any circumstances. There are hatreds and bad bloods inherent to the various cultures that have been millennia in the making and they shall not be relinquished easily.

Everyone is calling names, people are goaded into getting pissed, many people love a fight, people get beat down or killed, their family wants revenge and so on and so forth and so the wheel of dung reactions rotates in perpetuity. This occurs Nation against Nation, Culture against Culture, Race against Race, Person against Person.

Did the cycle begin with calling names? Or did names get called due to deeds done?

Anyway, people are more tribal than many people realize.

So “Freedom of Speech” and “Freedom of Religion” are fine until exercising that freedom requires that you interfere with someone else’s Speech or Religion or Life.

We either have a uniform code of conduct or we do not. In America that code is expressed more through “LAW” than through any specific known “Religion” though it is largely inspired by The Old King James Version of The Bible. They say there is a separation of Church and State but for the most part they are still one. Anyway, people are expected to follow “THE LAW” moreso than any given Religion.

Or rather, following Religious “LAWS” is peripheral to the obligation to follow “THE LAW”.

If you don’t follow The Bible there is no one there to arrest you, but if you break “THE LAW” you are held accountable.

One cannot follow religious customs (for the most part) if the customs in question violate “THE LAW”.

For instance you cannot simply go around stoning to death everyone who fails to follow The 10 Commandments or The Law of Moses as per the instructions given in The Torah if you follow Judaism.

So if you make a LAW that says, “You cannot stone to death people who fail to follow The Torah, in fact there is almost never a time that you can kill anyone else via stoning under any circumstances (except perhaps in self defense)” then we have A LAW that prohibits an activity that is prescribed by religion.

However “properly and completely following The Torah” would entail stoning everyone who failed to follow The Torah to death. So A LAW forbidding stoning other people to death is a law directly contradicting the instructions given in Judaism.

So what shall people who live in America and endeavor to practice Judaism do? They follow The Law of The Land, they do not stone other people to death under any circumstances because doing so is forbidden by The Country that they are in. At least this is what I imagine they should do, but there are still exceptions of various forms to be sure.

So its more complicated than saying “You have freedom of speech and religion” because both Religion and Speech can be very disruptive to society in their own rights. Any group that demands or asserts dominance and demands conversion to their faith is endeavoring to transmute the morass of civilization that America is, into their own image. It’s highly unlikely that everyone will ever follow the same program of religion at this time and thus each group’s fantasy of one day asserting total dominance are surely vain and preposterous.

Never-The-Less each group draws up their lines in the sand and pretends that they are forbidden to cross them, all the while violating their own rules often every-day.

So people are not obligated to have actually indepthly studied anything they have an opinion about.

They talk and talk and talk and often are completely full of shit with a tiny grain of truth somewhere intermixed. And in America they are free to talk. It’s a good thing too because ultimately if people can be full of shit they can also be very intelligent and informed.

Consciousness is a spectrum from the densest ignorance to the greatest genius.

From total lack of knowledge to being totally all informed.

A minority of one that knows the truth can be more powerful than an entire world in ignorance.

It’s a tragedy that some people abuse this freedom of speech to say the most ignorant and hideous things. It makes people contemplate limiting the things that people are allowed to say.

And not to speak of the things that LAW forbids people to do. You might not be able to “legally” do much of anything by the time all the LAWS are applied. And what is that LAW? The LAW is a cabal of individuals willing to use force to insure that people follow those LAWS. If a cabal member is not nearby then no LAW will be enforced. It requires a group of people willing to kill and imprison other people by subjecting them to threats and bodily harm.

The makers of Laws and the enforcers of Laws really mostly just process the criminals but it largely fails to actually stop the acts that it punishes. Its punitive and not very preventative.

Thus NEW LAWS will only bring about further escalation of force, or will only broaden the net of people that The Enforcers can punish and make a profit somehow.

So they can say that I have “Freedom of Speech” or “Freedom of Religion” but if someone interferes with my expression of those freedoms who will punish my oppressors and re-secure my freedoms? It is the person willing to use force to protect my “freedoms”.

If “God” gave me these rights why do I require Violence to maintain them and preserve them?

When others transgress these “freedoms” some “God” does not show up to preserve our rights, but rather we require “A Legal Process”. The oldest cultures in the world did not recognize these same rights so apparently “God” must have given us these rights at some point in recent history. Not only that but America and a few other countries are the only ones that recognize “Freedom of Speech”, “Freedom of Religion”, and “The Right To Bear Arms”. I fear that we are awful optimistic to believe that these are “God Given Rights”. It sounds good. And I suppose it should be applied in general, but the LAW is one that The System furnishes and The System is made of people not gods or goddesses.

Nor were our Founding Fathers and Mothers gods and goddesses either, but people with lofty thoughts and extensive ambitions that they were willing to secure via the shedding of blood.

Perhaps by “God” they were meaning the old fashioned Roman station of “God” that the senate voted to upraise their leaders to.

If all words were chosen with the utmost care then freedom of speech would not be a problem.

Its just that many people use speech to abuse, to lie, to cheat, to intimidate, or to lead astray.

Speech is a doubled edged sword.