Yep. Very similar yet as I said, the fundamental right of free speech is not solely for political speech so the limitations are inherent in many cases. Even the best of the jurists and judges disagree with free speech concepts and what should be applied. The US systems for checks are also imperfect and as
@Kaptaan and
@T-123456 and
@Saithan societies like yours and ours and we must also understand that free speech will always have a limit but what is that limit? What defines it? For example we often call western nations and their theories as the bastion of free speech theories but what happens when someone in the west uses the free speech against the state structure? The US court faced this problem multiple times and each time tried to balance limitation and freedom. Maybe our court judgment is the solution which adjudged that restrictions and limitations are to be defined conservatively rather than liberally.
Dunno who this Ayush fellow is, but he seems a well-reasoned and cognisant chap. Maybe you guys can bring him here for a chat?
Concerning these lines:
"free speech against the state structure"
"restrictions and limitations are to be defined conservatively rather than liberally."
I was about to launch into a whole kind of different (than I eventually did) long spiel about:
A) Wisely thinking about when the shoe will be on the other foot (regarding any opponent's speech and right to their belief/opinion however abominable you may find it etc)
B) Defining and Questioning Caesar before rendering things unto him "that which are his" given his vast power. (Doing the same for all human authority in general)
C) The very root difference between plato and aristotle (and why I always will align with the latter regarding this)
i.e how these (among still further points) all rest with collectivism w.r.t individualism (especially considering the collective is made of individuals and we all exist/perceive as the latter only too)....but I thought better of it (i.e more theory based dabble).
Such things rest clearly in my head (and in excellent stories/movies like "The Minority Report"), but I do them no proper justice to summarise (the wise and learned probably already can intuit much about what I'd say)....and I have no time and interest to flesh these out to proper scope at the current juncture.
Let me say I give people that push or lean towards collectivism (And inevitably some kind of authoritarianism) over individualism (by whatever argument that rests in their head for it) a full benefit of the doubt generally (that they act in good faith)...but that their approach is fundamentally and grossly wrong to me (especially given that most people that end up coming to power by such views mostly do not share their good faith especially with time).
i.e people that would subscribe to as you put it "conservative restrictions and limitations" on the individual (rather than the collective) as the default position.
I give them this benefit of the doubt given I once also shared some of that ideology (or at least was somewhat closer to it than now).
But I have long seen its logical and practical flaws (past the moral ones) and even great folly at times.
Such folks most likely have not talked face to face (at any length) with victims who experienced first-hand indelible excesses of collectivism...and both lived to tell the tale and for some reason (known only to them) chose to share it much later with a idealist spring chicken upstart like me.
One can read all the books they want, watch all the documentaries they want to, even watch interviews and read testimonies of such victims....but nothing compares to having one tell you what they saw and lived through, face to face. Not even close. So let me dabble into the lived application side of this to contrast with my more usual "theory" escapades.
3 stand out to me the most.
1 (Chinese woman, my 2nd mother almost) I'll share her and her family's tale in the China series.
1 (Polish man) I don't think I'll ever share anything about, the depravity he witnessed makes me almost nauseous and the nihilist side of me (which I abhor) enshrouds and lingers on my mood.
But the 3rd I'll give a telling short summary here.
Daughter of an Ukrainian "Kulak"....for a whole 2 - 3 hours she ("Baba") recounted to me (her face barely changing - something that I'll never forget) the whole story in her little village of Ukraine.
I forget how the whole conversation started exactly. I think I was the first brown person she had ever had a real long talk with (I am a close friend of her grandson, and we were checking in on her while visiting her neck of the woods) and she was naturally inquisitive about my origins.
When I answered India (and gave some context and perfunctory related conversation), she (being a lady of emotional gravitas) moved onto some story in the news she had come across about female infanticide and other horrific stories (in India)....
"they're doing that to babies??"
I still remember how my good friend (her grandson) tried to steer the conversation away (so as to not offend me, he did warn me beforehand about her "topics") but stopped when he saw I was fine with this all and I gave some solemn answers (which impressed his dear "Baba").
Anyway seeing something seemed out of order (attention being on India, and I being a guest and she the host), she proceeded to (slowly at first, but much faster with time) tell me as much as she could and wanted to about how Ukraine faced far worse when she was young.
I kept stiff upper lip at the time...but after her son (my friend's dad) filled in more details much later, I more often than not find it quite hard not breaking into tears when I dwell on it all.
You see my friend, without face to face recounts (of which I will spare you the horrid details) like this, people often grossly overvalue what govt/collective is in the end and underrate the terrible power it has at its disposal (and really without much effort if designed, arranged or atrophied badly).
The restrictions and limitations must always be put on
THEM. They are there to serve the people (with the trust and power
we give them) at our pleasure, not the other way around.
The constitution is a contract WE have with the govt, not the other way around.
All of this is always up for our (peaceful) debate and (peaceful) change as we see fit too..a govt has NO right to intervene in any of that.
It is not a coincidence that authoritarian govts (that later do the atrocious evil actions at immense scale) always go after free speech first...before the rest of the freedoms in their way (of whatever "greater" goal).
In this (Baba's story) case, it all initially involved the govt "conservatively" putting limits and restrictions on what the "Kulaks" could say/do especially in any unsightly "anti-state" and "subversive" speech or organisation they could attempt (as the govt's chosen expedient scapegoat noose tightened around them).
Then with that precedent established for a while, it inevitably turned into meeting quotas of failure-assigning as the state's signature program failed even more (and thus a wretched exercise unfolded and accelerated into simply finding more "Kulaks" by broadening the criteria for this as the state needed and desired - if the original threshold was the ownership of 4 cows, it was dropped to 3, then to 2 and even 1 ).
Then finally came the crushing effect of the man made (and state enforced) famine.
You see her father, a number of uncles and her 2 older brothers all were taken away (and never seen again) with very much the argument of
"speech against the state structure".
Neither did it end there, and the truly gut-wrenching part of the story (on rest of family incl. her) goes on as the famine kicked in ....
"like it was just yesterday"....and how few in her immediate lot even survived....
When you know these stories (intense part of hers keeps going for a while after, incl ww2 and her most astonishing trip to Germany and then the UK and then finally to Canada), you will (if a human with even the slightest moral principle) by default hold every govt (and the very concept of it) in the highest suspicion as a default like I do.
Nothing can be taken for granted, every thing they do must be built/proven past it...and the populace must always be as educated, aware and ready as it possibly can for the worst regarding govt.
They
all have the ability to change/morph just like that. The system must make it as difficult as possible for them to do that....that needs as many rights invested with the people and as much of the govt focused and defined and limited as possible.
Collectivism at large to me should be absolutely minimal+defined and can only sustainably exist only where it has completely rationally proven its need for (and no more than that, it must be kept hemmed in there, things like security, law + order w.r.t constitution implementation... that individuals cannot reasonably provide at the scales needed)....its power where its allowed to exist must be balanced and hedged extremely well.
Any enlightened soul or group of souls on this matter (requiring good perspective and debate on the individual vs collective) that set up a constitution/govt, must always assume the worst down road (assume the worst people coming to power) and set the system to handle that worst case scenario.
i.e for example always assume some branch of govt will go rogue/tyrannical by any number of ways....so design the other branches to slow down + limit + reign it in.
A deep study into just 1 year of the weimar republic from 1932 - 1933 (same period as the famine I speak of in ukraine) will tell you all the answers why...instead of "Kulaks" and "etc" it was "Jews" and "etc".
Germany even had a democracy, had a constitution, had well established courts of law and legal system at the time. It had produced a very good chancellor (Streseman) fairly recently too.
Thus if you can backwork what was required to make the events of 1932 - 1933 as impossible as possible (which it wasnt even close to at the time clearly given what ended up actually happening), you have understood the broad contours of my argument.
But most people do not study or read about this enough, much less interact with those that saw it firsthand ( in the weimar downstream case, it's the polish gentleman I referred to).
This all leads to and affirms why a constitution must have certain negative rights for the govt (those that are inherent inalienable rights of the individual)
This must include no infringement on well-defined + robust free speech, free assembly, free press, free religion/belief. Especially given these are the very first canaries in the coalmine for the citizenry....for the toxic gas lurking...quite literally.
I end with quote by Jean "Who am I?" Valjean:
Si je me tais, je me damne
Si je parle, c'est moi qui me condamne.
(“If I stay silent, I am damned.... If I speak, I am condemned.”)
To me, I (imperfect human) would rather speak up and speak the truth and be condemned (by another imperfect human agency) rather than be damned (by untruth, grossest sin and fouled honour).
I won't spoil the story for what Jean Valjean chooses (for any that havent read it)...and what his personal circumstances were that made it quite difficult to choose.
But the point is this moral process at the best default level comes from the individual, not the collective (imperfect human agency)...as
@Saithan has summarised above.
defencehub.live
