A foolish man learning that the Buddha observed the principle of great love which commends the return of good for evil, came and abused him. The Buddha was silent, pitying his folly. When the man had finished his abuse, the Buddha asked him, saying: “Son, if a man declined to accept a present made to him, to whom would it belong?” And he answered: “In that case it would belong to the man who offered it.”
“My son, thou hast railed at me, but I decline to accept thy abuse, and request thee to keep it thyself“, said Buddha. I think followers of “peaceful” religion, other religions, social welfarism, conservatism, minarchism and statism can learn a lot from Buddha’s confab. It is a conventional trend to vociferously and impudently shout out “my feelings are hurt”, “I am offended”, “my sentiments are hurt”, etc., without knowing how are emotions formed and why. A simple rational analysis can be a worth catharsis to logically learn that “At what ratio one must rate and limit the free speech and why?” I doubt whether the encoder forced the receiver to compulsorily behold the text, message, painting, etc. People have a volition to accept, ignore or refute the asserted claims, than empowering the state to censor the natural right to express of all others. As far as I know, I believe, I have not signed any social contract. So, it is immoral to intimidate and consolidate me to act within the biblical realms of constitution. I do not think that I also have any natural right to limit my freedom of speech, just because you think that your level of cognitive dissonance is uncontrollable.
I am an anarchist as well as an atheist, and I believe that religious people also have an “absolute” right to speech. I do not think that theists, statists or statheists will think this way, like I liberally do. I am not expecting, though. Religious people always tell me that “Free speech should be ‘legally’ governed, otherwise it can be misused”. I wish they’d limited their own logical fallacies, mystical stories, first. I also think that regulating free speech beget incoherent discourses than coherent argumentation, because limitation is impossible without intimidation. Intimidation is one of the structural factor to cognitively condition a free thinking mind. Make free speech so free that any amount of operant conditioning should aesthetically wither away with the introduction of freedom. What do you see around, by the way? I do not owe any onus to any exogenous entity; neither I will massage anyone’s blissful ignorance by expropriating myself. I think that “others” have no natural onus to mandate themselves against a free speaker, as long as the speaker is not violating the norms in your private property. Murray Rothbard’s chapter “Human Rights as Property Rights”, in The Ethics of Liberty, answers that rights for humans are property rights. Thus, “In fact, there are no human rights that are separable from property rights.” He discusses the “freedom of speech” extensively in that chapter, in fact, that’s how he begins the chapter:
Take, for example, the “human right” of free speech. Freedom of speech is supposed to mean the right of everyone to say whatever he likes. But the neglected question is: Where? Where does a man have this right? He certainly does not have it on property on which he is trespassing. In short, he has this right only either on his own property or on the property of someone who has agreed, as a gift or in a rental contract, to allow him on the premises. In fact, then, there is no such thing as a separate “right to free speech”; there is only a man’s property right: the right to do as he wills with his own or to make voluntary agreements with other property owner.
Suggested readings:
“Offended? Go, kill yourself!” – by Jaimine
“Give me freedom and shut the fuck up” – by Jaimine
