French Magazine Stands up for FS

[Dylan]

[Zeugma]

[Boris Johnson]

[Dylan]

Well sure, globalism changes things to an extent, but that begs the question of why should we change our perspective on speech instead of them changing theirs? What makes their desire to kill and burn and riot over expression take priority over our desire for expression? If you answer that lives are at stake because of their responses, I retort that we should not be held hostage by the brinksmanship of illogical actors filled with violent rage.

And your point re drawing a hard line through case law is idealistic at best.
As anyone whose litigated a case can tell you, hard lines become quite pliable in practice, especially in a murky and difficult to define area like freedom of expressiOn. Indeed, it's the difficulty of drawing fair and useful lines that has lead US courts to throw up their hands and allow essentially all speech.

Western culture is similar in many ways but this conversation by itself highlights the widely disparate views on expression across the Atlantic. The US is quite radical in this regard and very very different from most European countries.

Forgot to add: I practice on a pretty global scope, I'm fairly well travelled and I work with many people from all over the world. Differences are shrinking but they certainly exist. To say otherwise just reflects your unfamiliarity with cross border cultures.

[RoyBatty]

[PoS]

[Dennis]

[Dennis]

[Boris Johnson]

Ok, how is freedom of spech eroded in the U.K? Because I can't publish a pamlphet calling jews christ killers? What a loss.

Thats the problem here really, your taking the unity of all expressions of opinion as an article of faith. When pushed on it, your basically angrily rejecting the very notion that to the question or otherwise engage in fallacy is anything but a fine and proper thing to do and that complex abstract political principles upon which states involving complex societies are supposed to be founded are 'just that simple'. Its a terrible, terrible argument. That could only feel convincing to someone who quite frankly is down right dogmatic in his methods of thinking about politics.

Also you appear to now be resting on this distinction that words are not acts, hmm, slander appears to be the obvious counter example to that. However, I shouldn't need to go this far as i've noted several times now this distinction between physical and verbal acts of harm is entirely arbitrary when applied to the causal chain that leads to harm. Which as you've invoked deliberately consequentialist notions in the few defenses of the unity of freedom of expression gives your argument a certain air of inconsistency.

Either way, I must stress this again because its important, your entire standpoint begs the question. Almost all of your responses presume the unity of all forms of expression, when that is the proposition in contention. Your argument, being fallacious cannot possibly secure the conclusion you wish as it is informally invalid.

Finally, this question your now getting so hung up on, being a fairly loaded one and thus, a false dichotomy for in a real life version of said scenario neither would be an option. But then again we can all set up fun 'either or' scenarios where we can get our opponent to either agree with our position or look morally bankrupt. For example would you either, agree with my point Or rape a six year old. There fun aren't they.

Dismiss this as 'pseudo-intellectualism' if you want, but the laws of reasoning are rather important to political philosophy.

[PoS]

The UK has never been a bastion for free speech and individual freedom- their government actually thought of Orwell's 1984 as a blueprint for effective government and implemented many of its peculiarities.