Once your speech starts to infringe on the rights of others it is no longer deserving of protection. Your rights are not more important than the rights of your fellow citizens. I don't understand why libertarians don't agree with that. I thought the whole point of the government was to protect the rights of the individual.
That is quite a chilling statement. What right do others have to silence speech? A right is not something that can be taken away due to public opinion. Otherwise it is a privilege. The entire foundation of a free society is built on free speech.
You have the right to silence speech that infringes on your rights. Someone's speech shouldn't be protected if they knowing print lies in order to ruin the career of another individual. Someone's speech shouldn't be protected if they leave a burning cross on the curb outside their black neighbor's house. Someone's speech shouldn't be protected if they are reprinting the published work of another person without permission or fair use. Someone's speech shouldn't be protected if they are threatening violence on another individual.
>A right is not something that can be taken away due to public opinion. Otherwise it is a privilege.
You don't even have to go back a decade to find that this isn't true. Prop 8 is a perfect example of how a right can be taken away by public opinion.
Some people get misled by the Declarations of Independence's whole "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" thing that human rights are some natural phenomena. That has never been true. We bestow these rights on each other because we as a civilization have decided they are the bare minimum that every person should be guaranteed. As human history will show it is a constant struggle to help ensure that is true.
>The entire foundation of a free society is built on free speech.
By that logic no free society has ever existed before.
Most of your examples are covered by other laws. Property rights, defamation or such. However, none of this is forbidden as speech.
>We bestow these rights on each other
This is demonstrated as false because we had these rights before there ever was something we could call government or even a society. When you are born into the world alone as a living being there is nothing to silence you. Freedom did exist before civilization.
>By that logic no free society has ever existed before.
Status of a free society is not a boolean. The degree to which the society is free is strongly correlated to the degree of free speech within the society.
That is exactly my point. What do you think defamation is if isn't a limitation on free speech? What do you think copyright is if it isn't a limitation on free speech? What do you think laws against threats or intimidation are if they aren't a limitation of free speech? Those laws are created because we think some speech shouldn't be protected.
>This is demonstrated as false because we had these rights before there ever was something we could call government or even a society. When you are born into the world alone as a living being there is nothing to silence you. Freedom did exist before civilization.
There is no one stopping anyone from taking your rights away if you are born into the world alone as a living being. That is one of the primary purposes of government. The protection of its citizens' rights. If we don't have some force to protect those rights, there is nothing preventing the powerful from taking away the rights of the weak as evidenced by the entirety of human history.
>Status of a free society is not a boolean. The degree to which the society is free is strongly correlated to the degree of free speech within the society.
That is obviously true, but the r value in that correlation also isn't equal to 1. The US is at the extreme in terms of free speech but it is rarely in the top of the various freedom indices that exists to measure the freedom of a society.
Think of it this way. If I harm someone by punching them, I will not be prosecuted for improper use of my fist. I will be prosecuted for the damages. Same with these examples of speech. You are being prosecuted for damages, not violating a speech code.
So a law that forbid certain speech and allowed for prosecution without proving damages or somehow prevented me from saying something in advance would then be a limitation on actual speech.
The problem starts, when people project there wish to control the lives of others upon some vague enough person as power.
Other People need the help of government? They should stop being lazy and put their faith in the free market.
My folks need government help? Well we deserve it, give it to us, right now, don’t delay, don’t you have a heart?
Compared to the members of communist, conservative and other demanding and identity-integral idealogies, libertarians are far smaller in number and altogether weaker as an independant political force.