Your freedom ends where mine begins free#

Tobacco ads are illegal in most developed countries ⁴.Most developed countries have some criminal regulation against “crimes of honor”, such as defamation, calumny, slander and libel, all of which may have slightly different meanings in different legislations.“publicly inciting to violence or hatred” or “publicly condoning, denying or grossly trivialising” genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes are offences under European law.Incitement to genocide is illegal under international criminal law ¹.

Your freedom ends where mine begins free#

Here are some examples of situations in which pretty much all modern, liberal democracies limit free speech:

It’s hard to even imagine what something like that would mean. But no country allows 0% or 100% free speech. Some countries grant very little freedom of speech to their citizens, while some grant quite a lot. The extent to which freedom of speech is protected is in a spectrum, and varies from country to country. Many seem to live this binary illusion that “we still have free speech for the moment, but we’re about to lose it if we don’t stop the social justice warriors”. If you tweet “I hate niggers” and anybody dares to criticize you, there will quickly be legions of supporters coming to your rescue, defending your freedom of speech and condemning the PC-police. Free speech is already limited and you’re not complainingįree speech. “Morality must relate, at some level, to the well-being of conscious creatures.” - Sam Harris 2. Some may accuse me of being overly utilitarian, but as imperfect as vanilla utilitarianism may be, I still haven’t heard of any account of ethics that manages to deal away with utility altogether. That’s why it’s illegal to kidnap people and torture them, even if you let them live in the end. Clearly, if the suffering caused by a person’s actions crosses a certain threshold, curbing their freedom to do so is not only morally legitimate, but imperative. Very quickly we’re not only talking about freedom anymore, but about ethics and the relative value of freedom when compared to different actions which cause different degrees of discomfort. What about tickling people on the streets though? What about disturbing them by making very loud noises in public spaces? Why is punching people illegal? Also, except for a couple of freaks, nobody likes to be punched. If you don’t want all hell to break loose you must enforce some boundaries on people’s freedoms. There is a wide enough consensus that killing innocent people is immoral and therefore modern democracies concede the monopoly of violence to the state. Why is killing people illegal? Because generally it’s conceived that people want to live and don’t want to die and that somehow the right to live trumps the right to kill. But where do we draw the line between legitimate and illegitimate limitations of people’s freedoms? Freedom is one of those things that are good in moderation, but that may be dangerous if taken to an extreme. Should we conclude that freedom is bad!? Of course not. Of course, there must be limits to freedom, one can’t simply kill whoever they want. Everyone has heard this piece of conventional wisdom and I guess it’s pretty safe to assume that most agree with it. That brings us to the first item of the list: 1. After all, we all know that any concept can only be one of two things: good or bad.

whatever you want to, without being controlled or limited” - Online Cambridge Dictionaryīeautiful. “the condition or right of being able or allowed to do, say, think, etc. So let’s take some time to think about it.īefore we start talking about free speech, let’s make sure we have the basics clear. People defend all sorts of nonsense in the name of freedom. It’s probably the concept people abuse and misuse the most when discussing about politics, law and the role of the state. An apparently simple concept that you’d think people understand pretty well, after all it’s a fundamental human right. I do not think it means what you think it means.įreedom.