399BC Socrates speaks to jury at his trial: 'If you offered to let me off this time on condition I am not any longer to speak my mind... I should say to you, "Men of Athens, I shall obey the Gods rather than you."'
1215 Magna Carta, wrung from the unwilling King John by his rebellious barons, is signed. It will later be regarded as the cornerstone of liberty in England.
1516 The Education of a Christian Prince by Erasmus. 'In a free state, tongues too should be free.'
1633 Galileo Galilei hauled before the Inquisition after claiming the sun does not revolve around the earth.
1644 'Areopagitica', a pamphlet by the poet John Milton, argues against restrictions of freedom of the press. 'He who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.'
1689 Bill of Rights grants 'freedom of speech in Parliament' after James II is overthrown and William and Mary installed as co-rulers.
1770 Voltaire writes in a letter: 'Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.'
1789 'The Declaration of the Rights of Man', a fundamental document of the French Revolution, provides for freedom of speech .
1791 The First Amend-ment of the US Bill of Rights guarantees four freedoms: of religion, speech, the press and the right to assemble.
1859 'On Liberty', an essay by the philosopher John Stuart Mill, argues for toleration and individuality. 'If any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.'
1859 On the Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin, expounds the theory of natural selection. TH Huxley publicly defends Darwin against religious fundamentalists.
1929 Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, of the US Supreme Court, outlines his belief in free speech: 'The principle of free thought is not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought we hate.'
1948 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is adopted virtually unanimously by the UN General Assembly. It urges member nations to promote human, civil, economic and social rights, including freedom of expression and religion.
1958 Two Concepts of Liberty, by Isaiah Berlin, identifies negative liberty as an absence or lack of impediments, obstacles or coercion, as distinct from positive liberty (self-mastery and the presence of conditions for freedom).
1960 After a trial at Old Bailey, Penguin wins the right to publish D H Lawrence's sexually explicit novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover.
1962 One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn describes life in a labour camp during Stalin's era. Solzhenitsyn is exiled in 1974.
1989 Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini issues a fatwa against Salman Rushdie over the 'blasphemous' content of his novel, The Satanic Verses. The fatwa is lifted in 1998.
1992 In Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky points out: 'Goebbels was in favour of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you're in favour of free speech, then you're in favour of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise.'
2001 In the wake of 9/11, the Patriot Act gives the US government new powers to investigate individuals suspected of being a threat, raising fears for civil liberties.
2002 Nigerian journalist Isioma Daniel incenses Muslims by writing about the Prophet Mohammed and Miss World, provoking riots which leave more than 200 dead.
2004 Dutch film maker Theo van Gogh is killed after release of his movie about violence against women in Islamic societies.
The overseers, the politicians on their moral crusade behaving as if they have a hot line to God
curtail free speech, this is the behaviour of soi disant (so called) 'educated' people
The threat of a sanction makes it more difficult and potentially more costly to exercise our freedom of speech. Such sanctions take two major forms. The first, and most serious, is legal punishment by the state, which usually consists of a financial penalty, but can stretch to imprisonment (which then, of course, further restricts the persons free speech). The second threat of sanction comes from social disapprobation. People will often refrain from making public statements because they fear the ridicule and moral outrage of others.
The Public Order Act 1986 in the U.K. does not require such a stringent barrier as the harm principle to prohibit speech. The Act states that “A person is guilty of an offence if he ...displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting, within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress.”
In 2001 evangelist Harry Hammond was prosecuted for the following statements: “Jesus Gives Peace, Jesus is Alive, Stop Immorality, Stop Homosexuality, Stop Lesbianism, Jesus is Lord”. For his sins he was fined 300 pounds and made to pay 395 pounds in costs. In 2010, Harry Taylor left anti-religious cartoons in the prayer-room of Liverpool's John Lennon Airport. The airport chaplain was “insulted, offended, and alarmed” by the cartoons and called the police. Taylor was prosecuted and received a six-month suspended sentence
he most recent (June 2016) case to receive public attention involves Paul Gascoigne, the former English football star, who has been charged with racially aggravated abuse after commenting, whilst on stage, that he could only make out a black man standing in a dark corner of the room when he smiled
Subsequent to the Gascoigne case many offered the view that Britain had become a totalitarian state.The narcolepsy of having one view
Mill, for example, argued that we should allow speech of this type so that our ideas do not fall into the “slumber of a decided opinion”
If we want to limit speech because it causes harm, we will have to ban a lot of political speech. Most of it is useless, a lot of it is offensive, and some of it causes harm because it is deceitful and aimed at discrediting specific groups. It also undermines democratic citizenship and stirs up nationalism and jingoism, which results in harm to citizens of other countries.
Even worse than political speech, according to Kateb, is religious speech. He claims that a lot of religious speech is hateful, useless, dishonest, and foments war, bigotry and fundamentalism. It also creates bad self-image and feelings of guilt that can haunt persons throughout their lives.
Harm by such sources is more extensive than we might have thought;
Those of an overly sensitive disposition (the fashionable snowflake student generation) make standard hard to apply because many people take offense as the result of an overly sensitive dispositions and are encouraged to do so by their 'educated' Professors.
when we are discussing free speech, we are not dealing with it in isolation; what we are doing is comparing free speech with some other good
WHAT IS THAT OTHER GOOD?
It is the world of politics that decides what we can and cannot say guided, but not hidebound, by the world of abstract philosophy. Fish suggests that free speech is about political victories and defeats. The very guidelines for marking off protected from unprotected speech are the result of this battle rather than truths in their own right: “No such thing as free (nonideologically constrained) speech; no such thing as a public forum purged of ideological pressures of exclusion” (Fish, 1994, 116). Speech always takes place in an environment of convictions, assumptions, and perceptions i.e., within the confines of a structured world. The thing to do, according to Fish, is get out there and argue for one's position.
Free speech will be more limited in the military, where the underlying value is hierarchy and authority, than it will be at a university where one of the main values is the expression of ideas.
(Well, that used to be the case...till the Liberal Professoriat took over now in the Humanities the ratio of Liberal to Conservatives is 25 to 1, in Engineering it is 2 to 1)
A campus is not simply a “free speech forum but a workplace where people have contractual obligations, assigned duties, pedagogical and administrative responsibilities” (1994,129). Almost all places in which we interact are governed by underlying values and speech will have to fit in with these ideals: “[r]egulation of free speech is a defining feature of everyday life” (Fish, 1994,129).
One cannot be classed as a liberal if one is willing to stray much further into the arena of state intervention than already discussed. Whaaat!!!
Acts can be “evil” if they are dangerous to a traditional way of life, because they are immoral,
So if you flood a small Gernan/American/British small town with immigrants who has known a certain way of life
with certain inalienable rights to a particular way of life and a certain culture, is that an evil enacted by a political class....note they the political class will not be confronted, as they are econonically aparthied from the day to day cultural shock of absorbing a mass of immigration.
Liberals oppose such views because they are not impressed by states trying to mold the moral character of citizens. This is complete nonsense, for how come legislation on hate speech and all the other Liberal laws enacted on the mass, the citizenery, the 'deplorables' the 'uneducated'.
Those of an overly sensitive disposition (the fashionable snowflake student generation) make standard hard to apply because many people take offense as the result of an overly sensitive dispositions and are encouraged to do so by their 'educated' Professors.
when we are discussing free speech, we are not dealing with it in isolation; what we are doing is comparing free speech with some other good
WHAT IS THAT OTHER GOOD?
It is the world of politics that decides what we can and cannot say guided, but not hidebound, by the world of abstract philosophy. Fish suggests that free speech is about political victories and defeats. The very guidelines for marking off protected from unprotected speech are the result of this battle rather than truths in their own right: “No such thing as free (nonideologically constrained) speech; no such thing as a public forum purged of ideological pressures of exclusion” (Fish, 1994, 116). Speech always takes place in an environment of convictions, assumptions, and perceptions i.e., within the confines of a structured world. The thing to do, according to Fish, is get out there and argue for one's position.
Free speech will be more limited in the military, where the underlying value is hierarchy and authority, than it will be at a university where one of the main values is the expression of ideas.
(Well, that used to be the case...till the Liberal Professoriat took over now in the Humanities the ratio of Liberal to Conservatives is 25 to 1, in Engineering it is 2 to 1)
A campus is not simply a “free speech forum but a workplace where people have contractual obligations, assigned duties, pedagogical and administrative responsibilities” (1994,129). Almost all places in which we interact are governed by underlying values and speech will have to fit in with these ideals: “[r]egulation of free speech is a defining feature of everyday life” (Fish, 1994,129).
One cannot be classed as a liberal if one is willing to stray much further into the arena of state intervention than already discussed. Whaaat!!!
Acts can be “evil” if they are dangerous to a traditional way of life, because they are immoral,
So if you flood a small Gernan/American/British small town with immigrants who has known a certain way of life
with certain inalienable rights to a particular way of life and a certain culture, is that an evil enacted by a political class....note they the political class will not be confronted, as they are econonically aparthied from the day to day cultural shock of absorbing a mass of immigration.
Liberals oppose such views because they are not impressed by states trying to mold the moral character of citizens. This is complete nonsense, for how come legislation on hate speech and all the other Liberal laws enacted on the mass, the citizenery, the 'deplorables' the 'uneducated'.
Freedom of Speech is in a Shocking and Steep Decline Worldwide
Who Enjoys Free Press?
Only 13 percent, or one in seven people in the world enjoy a free press—that is, where coverage of political news is robust, the safety of journalists is guaranteed, state intrusion in media affairs is minimal, and the press is not subject to onerous legal or economic pressures. About 49 percent of the world’s population has a partly free press, and 46 percent live in not free media environments.
Reasons for decline, Political correctness, globalisation, diversity cultures for economic reasons
According to various NGOs, including Article 19 and Freedom House, steep declines worldwide were linked to heightened partisanship and polarization in a country’s media environment, and the degree of extralegal intimidation and physical violence faced by journalists
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