Thursday, March 12, 2015

Speech and truth (#2232)

What good is protecting free speech if the free speech being protected is false or a lie? I don't see an upside in that scenario. An important goal of any society should be to have a flourishing communication process by which all can have information that is valid and factual. In having other information that is intentionally invalid and non-factual only muddles the progress of the society on whole and gives an unfair advantage to those who create and manipulate the misinformation. The fact that intentional misinformation, or otherwise known as propaganda at best, blatant lies at worst, is protected for the most part as free speech shows that our judiciary and legislative branches have not done their jobs nearly enough in distinguishing out what is protected speech and what isn't. Free speech is our foundation, however not without tests to show whether the free speech is truth or lies. We have the means for developing tests by giving examples as evidence and then fine tuning those examples into general principles. A several part test is the best way to filter out whether a truth or a lie is being offered and for our judiciary and legislative branches to have done little to nothing to offer these tests is the general failing of both branches. They must be held accountable for their lack of effort to secure for our society a method for separating out what is protected speech and what isn't and making unprotected speech a libelous offence with real penalties and punishment. We as a society must have the ability to communicate with each other as maximally as possible through truth and facts. In order for our citizenry to grow into being the most and the best they can be they must have reliable and truthful information from which to apply their own critical thinking. Shame on the Supreme court and shame on Congress!

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