I don't agree with or identify with a lot of the opinions, beliefs and views expressed in the IDW, but I love the challenge to think, question and disagree. Free speech is an important principle but also a privilege....man made not God given?
The basic premise behind "rights" to begin with were based in old greek philosophy and a number of other big influencers from the philosophical and literary worlds. Universal truths, that being a human gave you access to.
Speech is one of those things. Another is the right to hold and aquire property in the persuit of happiness as a citizen.
The greater thinkers of our time believe without the ability to use words to convey a stance on something, the only thing we had left was tribal barbarism. From what history as shown us, that's about accurate.
Free will? Martin Luther disagreed. Because we inherited our sinful nature at birth, our will is bound to sin. Only Devine intervention can change us.
\Free speech is an important principle but also a privilege....man made not God given?\
I believe Freedom of Speech is a natural right. Which means it is innate and unalienable to being human. Which, if you believe that God exists (I do), then it is a God given right.
Just because one man can shut another man up for a time, it does not mean the right to speak freely has been remove, or alienated, from the man. All it means is the rights of the man who is temporarily silenced is having is inalienable right to speak violated. Even then, the right to speak has not been perfectly violated for a man can still speak to himself when he thinks. At this point in the oppression the right to speak intersects with a man's inalienable right to conscience.
Humanities capacity to behave inhumanly towards their neighbor does not rescind the rights of the neighbor. All it does, in the end, is demonstrate that to perfectly remove a natural right from a man, one has to kill him, or, destroy him as a man. This is where tyranny always ends.
Interaction is the means to escape the bland sameness of social structure . It is our way of being ourselves .