5 Things Everyone Gets Wrong About Free Speech


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I've seen people here mistake this before so I thought it would make for some good reading.

 

5 Things Everyone Gets Wrong About Free Speech
By Chris Bucholz 
September 23, 2014

 

The right to free speech is one of the most important rights we have. It's a key element of a functioning democracy, ensures minority groups can make their voices heard, and serves as the foundation for all the best (and worst) jokes.

 

But although the importance of free speech is widely known, the details on how it actually works aren't, to the point that when someone cites their right to "free speech" on the Internet it's an almost certainty that they don't know what that means and are probably confusing it with an imagined right to "have everyone be nice to me." So here, then, for the oppressed and oppressors that make up Cracked's audience, are five of the most important things about free speech that we always forget.

#5. It Only Prevents the Government From Restricting Speech
All of the laws protecting free speech make it clear that it protects an individual from having their speech limited by government action, which is intended to stop a government from silencing speech it doesn't like. Recall that the whole point of a democracy is for the people to vote for their leaders and occasionally vote out their leaders. It's a lot harder to do that if every piece of news you read claims your current leaders are perfect. For this reason alone, the right to freely criticize our leaders is important.

 

But none of our laws protecting free speech apply to authorities outside the government. Obviously someone outside the government has much less power to restrict free speech; they can't throw people in jail or a box with holes in it or anything. But they can do some things. Your right to free speech won't protect your job when you start shrieking obscenities at your boss during meetings. And if someone else has given you a platform to speak on, like a show or newspaper column, then they're under no obligation to let you keep that platform if they don't like what you're saying.

 

See the rest at Cracked

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