David Marcucci's Doorstep My personal thoughts, rants, raves, and more…

Explaining “Freedom”

I'm a big advocate of free speech, but much like the other aspects of the first amendment (i.e. religious freedom), free speech is often misunderstood. When we talk about having a "freedom" to do something this means no one should stop you from doing these things when you are "free" to do them. So freedom is really two fold. The other misconception with "freedom" is that it's often interpreted as someone should be "free from" other's "freedoms", this just isn't true.  Just are you are free to agree you are free to disagree but you are not free to interfere.

The first fold of freedom is pretty straight forward. Let's take free speech. You are free to say whatever you want, no restrictions. I even think hateful speech is covered but should be dealt with not by restrictions but by society. That will be covered in a different post. So back to saying whatever you want, that's pretty straight forward. So lets look at the second fold.

When are you "free" to exercise  your "freedom" of speech? Anytime and anywhere you are "free" to be. So what does that mean? We'll let's take some examples. If you are in your own home you are absolutely free to exercise your freedoms. If you are at my home you are only free to exercise the freedoms I allow you to exercise. If you are in a store you can exercise the freedoms the store owner(s) (or their delegate) allows you to exercise. If you are at a store you own you are absolutely free to define what freedoms can go on there.  Pretty simple, right?

Now the complicated examples. "Public" spaces. What is a "public" space? Well, there are raging arguments on that which I won't go into but rather I'll use this simple definition: if I paid for ownership of a place along with any other individuals then I, along with all other individuals who also paid, can regard that place as a "public" space and therefor have a certain level of "rights" to exercise our individual "freedoms". Wow, read that twice. That is pretty broad but generally that covers pubic spaces.  So let's look as some exceptions and see how they don't fit into that definition.

What about an apartment you rent.  Well, your money is paying for that place but only for temporary, partial ownership. You own that space for a given duration and often your "freedoms' are defined in a contract you voluntarily entered into with the absolute owner. So you don't get carte blanche "freedom" here. What about city streets? This gets more complicated since you did pay for partial ownership but that money was collected involuntarily and some of the agreements on it's use are involuntary as well. Still, I treat this like my home which I own with my wife, we decided to get married and therefore entered an agreement which means we both own our property. Sure she buys some things and I buy others but between us it's up for "public" use between the two of us. This does not mean that we always agree on its use, but we apply the second rule of "freedom" to that scenario.  The big difference here is I could break the agreement and take some stuff with me to go live differently. When we talk about cities and towns you are free to move out just as you chose to move in. Same with states and partially with countries (you actually are not "allowed" to leave the US without their permission, but again another topic). So we'll look at the "free from" exception to city streets just as I do with my home.

In a public space you are free to exercise freedoms and just are you are free, so are others.  This brings in the "free from" exception. People often try to argue that their "freedom" is impeded someway by other's "freedoms", if they are truly impeding your freedom then they are in the wrong but the simple act of freedom does not in an of itself impact anyone else. I apply this simple rule to see if that is really the case: you are not allowed to interfere with other's freedoms. Again a simple rule but very powerful.  Let's take some examples.

• Someone posts a sign, where they have the freedom to do so, that has a message you disagree with. I've never seen a sign that prevents me from disagreeing with its message. No matter how powerful you have the freedom still to disagree.
• Someone says something that I disagree with. I can say something back that contradicts their statement and voila my freedom is preserved.  Unless they are using some mechanism to literally prevent the sound waves from coming out your mouth your freedom is not impeded.
• Someone is praying to a god I don't believe in (either because I believe in a different god or none at all). I've never seen prayer physically force or prevent anyone from doing anything even if they are doing so out loud (see bullet above) or holding up a symbol (see first bullet) while exercising their freedom.
• Someone is standing on a sidewalk holding a sign (sign is covered above). Unless you can not physically get around them to exercise your freedom of movement then they are okay. Also, freedom of movement does not cover a right to move in a straight line or even at a certain speed so don't try that argument.

Lastly, the last argument I hear, that someone "being" somewhere infringes on your freedom. Well, I have this simple rule to cover that one: just because you can exercise your freedom anywhere, anytime you don't get the freedom to interfere everywhere, all the time. If someone get's to a location and decides to hold up sign there and is not interfering as define above you don't get to interfere with them. You can't tell them to move or decide that because you "want" that space at that time they can't have it either otherwise you most certainly would interfere as defined above. If they start chanting in that exact spot you can't tell them to stop because you "want" to chant in that exact same spot, you can chant next to them. This also applies to signs and symbols. If someone finds an awesome spot to put up their sign and you want to put a sign there too, you can't without interfering as outlined above and you have no freedom to make them take their sign down. You can ask them, maybe make a deal where you split the time, swapping signs, that is up to you and them, but as long as you can put your sign somewhere else they are not interfering with your freedom.

I'm a rational person, so I'd love to hear some scenarios that cause my reasoning to crumble and I'll likely respond. If convinced I'll even change my way of thinking. Just remember, this is my site, so you only have the freedom of speech I allow (but that is pretty much anything).