So 3 years ago I started a website, Socially Uncensored. And the basic goal was to provide an outlet where everyone could speak freely without restriction. No topic or comment was ever " to taboo" or not allowed and everything was on the table for discussion.
In those 3 years I noticed a trend. The people who cried the loudest about not silencing or restricting others... In a sense, the people who wanted the most censorship & cried the most about others being able to freely speak without restriction was my fellow Americans.
I find this kind of interesting and don't really know what to make of this.
As a fellow American myself, I know we pride ourselves in claiming to support free speech and denounce any ideas of censorship. And yet it was my fellow American's who in the last 3 years, who while enjoyed the freedom of speaking without restriction, seemed to demand the most restrictions for others.
What do you make of my findings?
I think it is typical, there are bad people with convoluted views of what free speech means and with dense populations, fragments of others mentalities wear off on one another setting an environment where who ever speaks the loudest and carries the biggest stick is right and most people unless really moved by something or have a vested interest in it...could really care less about what happens to those involved, generally speaking in an abstract way, most people are fine with you throwing your trash anywhere...as long as it is not in their backyard.
Apply that logic, you get people who think they can say anything about anyone, until someone says something about them, then it becomes a problem.
I think people are deranged for thinking there is any such thing as free speech, IMHO.
Sure, you can say anything you want, but it may cost you via jail, punishments, fines, so forth... depending who you choose to unleash your free speech towards, and when.
So does that make it actually free if it costs you in other possible ways?
Stand out the front of the White House and express your right to free speech stating you want to blow it up. Lets see how "free" that is!
If I write, "Adam Howard is a rapist pig." That is libel if untrue... thus is it really free?
Free speech does exist.
Once spoken words indicate a threat of intended physical or mental harm it becomes a crime and falls out of free speech, when someone uses words to tarnish someones reputation, or to make an unfounded accusation which could ruin a persons life they are crossing over from exercising free speech to using words as a verbal assault missile with hostile intent.
The concept is very simple.
You can say whatever you want as long as it doesn't violate any of the constitutional rights granted to another. The only problem with the constitution goes back to the same old problem that occurs often when dealing with people...the people.
As long as there is a set of rules to ensure everyone has an equal chance and a fair opportunity, there will be people who attempt to pervert the intents in order to rationalize stepping on another mans back in the name of widening their field of opportunity, establishing a cheap, effortless and lazy way of self assertion and ultimately to further their own prosperity at the cost of anyone else.
The people who do these things care nothing of the worlds people on the individual level and use a form of mental gymnastics to justify to themselves that what they are doing is acceptable and also telling themselves and others 'that is just the way it is'.