[Fwd: THE TEARS OF THE MIGHTY]

Gordon Fitch gcf at panix.com
Wed Mar 22 18:45:33 PST 2000



> >Speech is an act and should be treated like all other acts. If certain
> >speech acts cause harm to a certain person or group of persons those
> >persons need protection in the same way that potential victims of
> >physical violence need protection. I would make a distinction between
> >speech that is offensive and speech that is harmful. Speech that offends
> >does not necessarily harm.

Dace:
> If speech means sharing your thoughts, then that's not really an action.
> That's more like a mental activity that happens to involve more than one
> mind. It's only by accident that this communion entails some kind of
> physical action, like producing soundwaves in the air or pixels on a
> computer screen. At the same time, if your words are intended to achieve an
> effect beyond merely changing someone's mind, then this is speech only in
> the accidental sense that words happen to be the best tool for starting a
> stampede in a crowded theatre, for instance, or conspiring to commit a
> crime. These are objectively harmful and not subject to protection. So,
> speech which serves only to express opinion is not really an action, while
> speech designed to achieve an objective effect is indeed an action and is
> therefore not really speech.
>
> If we define the term this way, then the right to free speech is absolute.

Expression and communication, if they are at all successful, are actions in that they change the state of people's minds. This is recognized by the law of liberal states in justifying the forceful prohibition of libel, copyright violation, harassment, and certain kinds of fraud, whatever First Amendment may say. In effect, the possibility of property damage is held to exist in those kinds of speech, and property damage supersedes free expression. By the same reasoning, it seems logically consistent to say that a category of persons who are damaged by a slander against the category, and can prove it, could prevail against freedom of expression. I don't think Black people in the United States, among others, would have much trouble in coming up with such a proof. If you want to have absolute freedom of speech, I think you've got to throw out liberalism and its exceptions (essentially for bourgeois interests) and become an anarchist.

Gordon



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