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Originally Posted by PepsiFree
Actually, I honk you've missed the point, or are just poorly making yours. The point of the cartoon was "hey, this is how free speech works in the real world, so when you're being an a-hole and claim 'free speech!' this is why there are still consequences."
Go off on the philosophical ideal that we should all strive towards all you want, but the way it's applied is not how you describe, because like most very academic ideas they only work in practice, not in theory. The ideal of free speech doesn't work because of humans. We do, however, have a real version of free speech that DOES work, albeit not the high standard of the ideal, and calling hat one "wrong" just seems ignorant or overly academic.
You can talk about the philosophical concept of free speech, or free speech as it's successfully applied in many liberal societies all over the world. One is influence by the other, but only one actually exists.
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Look, if you're not even willing to make the effort to read my post when I clarify what I mean, and just want to repeat your original misinterpretation of what I'm saying, I don't really know what to do with that. Yet here, I shall try one more time.
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only one actually exists.
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Again, both actually exist. There is, first, a guarantee that the government will not arrest you for what you say which is enshrined in the constitution. That is a thing that exists. There is another thing that exists, which is the principle, which most of us value, that people should be able to exchange competing views and figure out who is right.
Neither of those things are limitless. The government can still place limits on your free expression, e.g. you cannot burn down a government building to express your frustration with taxes. In some places you can't deny the holocaust. There is a reasonable debate on how far the government should be able to go in limiting expression.
Likewise, society can still place negative pressure on certain viewpoints; e.g. in the past, you couldn't tell your co-workers about your views that you don't think Christianity makes much sense and so you're an atheist without risking social reprisal and possibly the loss of your job. Now, you can't write the Google memo without much the same consequence. There is a reasonable debate about what perspectives society should take a dim view of, and how significant the negative impacts should be (e.g. should Justine Sacco really have had her life ruined).
The XKCD cartoon, which is posted all over the place and has been repeatedly objected to on exactly this basis by the way, suggests that the first thing is the only thing that "freedom of speech" refers to. That is wrong. The fact that you can have a conversation with someone and disagree about literally
anything of substance - say, what the corporate tax rate in Alberta should be - and then go on with your life demonstrates the existence of freedom of expression as a general principle,
regardless of what limits the government places on its
own interference with that principle.