[lbo-talk] A PR disaster: Five views on Pussy Riot's war

[andie_nachgeborenen]

The first amendment isn't a principle, it is a rule of law. It embodies a principle, freedom of speech, extensively interpreted by the courts, legal scholars, philosophers, and thinkers going back to Milton and Locke. The great libertarian defense of the principle is Mill's On Liberty. The Russians don't have our first amendment, although I am sure their current constitution embodies some rules protecting freedom of speech, and there may be Russian law as well as law interpreting such principles in international treaties to which Russia is signatory. The more abstract discussions apply widely. It may be significant that as far as I know the earliest discussions in the Western tradition,starting with Milton and Locke, concerned religious freedom and toleration. That is part of why our own 1st amendment begins with the Establishment clauses,securing what the courts call the separation of church and state. Other countries with different traditions and problems have embodied freedom of speech and church state separation in different ways. Many countries that recognize freedom of speech and a secular state, including ours, limit these principles in various ways. Whether particular limitations are defensible in different context or even if they are correct, correctly applied, is highly debatable depending on the circumstances. In the case of PR, I don't know Russian law, but as a number of people haven't remarked, the penalty seems grossly disproportionate given my understanding of PR's behavior.

Sent from my iPad

On Aug 23, 2012, at 1:11 PM, Eric Beck <ersatzdog at gmail.com> wrote:


> On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 12:17 PM, Carrol Cox <cbcox at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>> Every one is searching for some abstract principle that would decide this
>> question: it doesn't exist.
> 
> Well it could exist, if we made it. And it actually does: the First Amendment.
> 
> But you're right that the search for an abstract principle is a
> problem. And in the PR/Putin affair, every argument put forward by the
> anti-PR/pro-Putin people has rested on some abstraction (about
> imperialism, sexism, etc.).
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