Do democracies sustain attacks from dictatorships because of this possible vulnerability ?

  • Lvxferre
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    10 months ago

    freedom of of speach doesn’t result in the right to insult or humiliate people, let alone call for violence.

    As a value and as a principle, unrestricted freedom of speech does grant you the right to insult and humiliate people - because “you’re trash and deserve to be treated as such” is still speech. It also grants you the right to silence other people, by screaming (metaphorically or even physically) so loud that they can’t be heard any more.

    However since this conflicts with other rights and it does not scale (no two people in the same room can have unrestricted freedom of speech at the same time), most [all?] laws geared towards the protection of speech draw a line somewhere, and stop protecting your freedom of speech in a few occasions. Where they draw said line is up to the government.