Freedom of speech is a right, not a privilege
Warren Kinsella links to this virtually incomprehensible, altogether self-negating post at Agoravox.
The right to free speech comes with responsibility, just like driving a motor vehicle. Use your vehicle in an irresponsible fashion, and you will lose the privilege of driving it. The same is true of free speech: This right must be exercised with great care and responsibility because speech has a huge potential for fender-benders and complete write-offs.
So is it a right, or a privilege? Let me clear that up for you, Werner: it’s a right. I don’t need a license to exercise it. I don’t have to carry insurance.
And Werner, apparently, never heard of Michelle Malkin before she joined the fray on this issue:
Now, one of the site founders is crying foul because Warman has launched even more lawsuits, as has Warren Kinsella, if she is to be believed. Whether the extent of this latest round of blogosphere litigation is accurate or not, it was enough for US blogger Michelle Malkin to sound the alarm and warn against a massive attack on the Canadian (conservative) blogosphere.
Malkin, of course, is blowing this all out of proportion. It is doubtful that she ever actually looked at the stuff some of those bloggers have written about Warman. For if she did, she would understand why he feels the need to drag them before a judge and jury - Malkin herself would doubtless sue anyone who said just half those things about her.
If he had heard of her before, he would have known that she is regularly called a whore, when her sole crime is being a Filippina (not to mention the amount of times she has to hear revolting references to “ping pong balls”). She’s been told, live on television by Geraldo Rivera that he would spit on her. She had to move house, because she and her family were being harassed.
Does she really sound like the kind of woman who goes running to a Kangaroo Court to solve her problems?
Kinsella is bored of the issue now. Well, bully for him. That probably means he knows - like Syed Soharwardy - that he’s on the wrong side of the debate, and just wants it to go away.
Or it means that the very rights that generations of people have fought and died for mean nothing to him.
Enjoy your vacation Warren. Sounds like you really need it.
A car is a potentially deadly instrument. Hence, operation thereof is a privilege. Irresponsible or negligent operation can cause loss of property, injury and all to frequently, loss of life. Even then, the privilege extends to operation in the common infrastructure, not on private property. The societal sanction of removal of privilege is thus an issue of public safety.
To elevate speech to the same status is to assert that public speech represents the same kind and level of risk profile to the community.
This is where, in my opinion, his argument falls apart. Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words… speech is ephemeral, and cannot cause loss of property, injury, or death. Our response to words is not autonomic - we have control over it. Your response to an impact by a wayward automobile tends to be, shall we say, somewhat less controlled. Physics dominates in the latter case, and dictates outcome. Outcome in the former case, is dictated by whatever lies between the audio receptors - the ears.
Further, speech is subject to counter speech. There is no analog to this in the world of automobiles. Surely, as an author and former columnist, he must believe that his own words bear some potency - but does he now assert that his very own are insufficient to neutralize another’s less well constructed “hurtful” words? Does he make like our loyal opposition leader and yield before entering the debate? Doomed to irrelevance before the first stride to the podium?
Simply asserting that free speech is a privilege does not make it so. I am unconvinced. A dangerously operated motor vehicle is not the same as an utterance. It does not have the same threat profile.
I will further assert that it was the squelching of free speech that enabled the evil-doers of the 20th century to carry out their work: those who dare protested (columists, authors) were effectively silenced. Although his position may seem noble, it is, in my opinion, naive and poorly informed. That is, unless his experience in the spin business has rendered him sufficiently cynical that he is convinced that one can successfully motivate a somnambulant public to support corrupt and/or evil regimes. An experience, by the way, unhardened by being proven in an environment of truly diverse and unfettered speech, where citizens are exposed to a multitude of views, rather than being cocooned by a sympathetic, often complicit, and highly concentrated corporate media industry.
I would finish with the sobriquet “Bag of Wind”, but, being ever so mindful not to cause serious injury to the weak, I have kept the Intercontinental Ballistic Word Missiles snug in their silos. It was a very close call.
Comment by shaken — March 10, 2008 @ 8:31 pm
Something which can be used without infringing anothers ability to use it is the virtual definition of a liberty (or “natural right” as some people prefer). Speech/writing fits that definition to a tea.
Comment by Brett_McS — March 11, 2008 @ 12:28 am
The “use it or lose it” theory wrt to free speech is silly. Even people found guilty of libel don’t lose their right to free speech. At most, they suffer a court order to not repeat the libel.
It is more accurate to argue that free speech has costs if abused.
I strongly believe that libel law in Canada needs reform. Such reforms have happened in other jurisdictions with similar legal traditions, such as Australia, the UK and New Zealand.
That being said, libel most certainly can cause immense damage. Consider the effect of being lied about in your community, to the point of people with influence over your life wielding that influence in a negative way. A landlord decides to maliciously evict you. Your employer fires you.
Consider the effect of someone penning a false complaint to your condo or co-op board… or the police.
Libel most certainly can damage.
I am a defendant in the Crookes v. Holloway libel case, btw.
Comment by Mark Francis — March 11, 2008 @ 8:21 am
[…] RIGHT GIRL: Freedom of speech is a right, not a privilege …. […]
Pingback by Steynianism 78.0 « Free Mark Steyn! — March 11, 2008 @ 12:12 pm
The only write-off is my morning coffee. Whenever I read Kinsella’s next diatribe, I end up spitting it onto the desk in gales of laughter.
Free speech is like driving a car, huh? So what’s it called when I mouth off at a party? Speeching under the influence?
Comment by Sean Berry — March 12, 2008 @ 7:47 am
shaken wrote:
“Further, speech is subject to counter speech. There is no analog to this in the world of automobiles.”
Demolition Derby?
Comment by jay stevens — March 18, 2008 @ 9:28 pm