Re: ****ASF Breaking News****
This next part I find interesting (I've omitted your quote re 18C).
Which is probably fair enough, but between this right to speak strongly against a thing/opinion and the concept of 'impinging on the rightful liberty of others' there is an incredible amount of tension. It's a massive grey area. And in itself, quite evidently, inadvertently destroys freedom of speech (and in a lot of cases most people would be happy it does).
I am sure you will agree that there lies within this grey area a constant tug of war between impinging too much on the liberty of the speaker and the liberty of the (sometimes unintentional) audience. Thus we find ourselves tangled in contradictions, some groups can say certain things, whilst others cannot say them.
As you know, if the law (government) will not restrict speech, then people themselves will. So how do you stop certain groups who are more powerful/influential than others from using this from the detriment of others? Throughout history, there are instances of the aristocracy/elites/ruling class, whatever you want to call them, speaking freely themselves, and using their power to impose incredible limits on those from outside of their class.
There's an incredibly deep philosophical history regarding this distinction, but unfortunately I'm not really well versed in a lot of it, so for the purposes of this conversation let's just accept your premise.
This next part I find interesting (I've omitted your quote re 18C).
Which is probably fair enough, but between this right to speak strongly against a thing/opinion and the concept of 'impinging on the rightful liberty of others' there is an incredible amount of tension. It's a massive grey area. And in itself, quite evidently, inadvertently destroys freedom of speech (and in a lot of cases most people would be happy it does).
I am sure you will agree that there lies within this grey area a constant tug of war between impinging too much on the liberty of the speaker and the liberty of the (sometimes unintentional) audience. Thus we find ourselves tangled in contradictions, some groups can say certain things, whilst others cannot say them.
As you know, if the law (government) will not restrict speech, then people themselves will. So how do you stop certain groups who are more powerful/influential than others from using this from the detriment of others? Throughout history, there are instances of the aristocracy/elites/ruling class, whatever you want to call them, speaking freely themselves, and using their power to impose incredible limits on those from outside of their class.