RE: An Open Invitation To Alex Jones
I was with you until you got here:
as long as I'm not causing any physical or mental harm to anyone, I should be able to speak my mind.
That's not correct, the "mental harm" is irrelevant, because if you establish that as the standard then anyone can silence anyone else by claiming "mental harm", that's essentially what other countries have with their "hate speech" laws, any country with any sort of hate speech laws does not have the right to free speech. Insulting, offensive or upsetting speech is really the only speech that needs any legal protection, nobody complains about or tries to silence "love" speech do they?
free speech is not an invitation to intentionally hurt someone's feelings or insult them.
Yes, it is, that's basically what it is for. The only type of speech anyone ever tries to silence is that which upsets, insults or offends them. Where the line needs to be drawn is at defamation, you can upset and insult people but you cannot lie about them, that's crossing the line.
Thanks for a well thought out response @funbobby51, I appreciate that a lot :-)
Yours is a valid way of looking at it, that's why I consciously added the remark about "intent". We have experience with this, right here on the internet on social media. Regarding "free speech" as a right to insult is just not the right way to approach it in my view. You will inevitably insult of hurt feelings when being honest, that's why a good understanding of intent has to play a role on both sides. And it is an area where we'll always be experimenting; humor, for example, is a way to insult without having the intent to hurt anyone. To intentionally hurt someone's feelings is always wrong when there's other ways to communicate what you have to say. So an atheist can go around and ridicule faith at every chance he has, or he can try and have a dialogue with "the other side" on equal footing where both sides at least try to respect each others feelings. Which you think is best to do or which will have the desired result has solely to do with the intent of your conversation. Free speech is not for insulting, my friend, not taking away that insults can sometimes be functional to. Does this make sense..?
Being insulted is subjective. There is not any right to not be insulted thus insulting people is a great example of the sort of speech that free speech rights are intended to protect. I can say what I want, even if I intend it to insult someone, think about it, if no one was insulted or offended who would try to silence that speech?
If someone chooses to be jerk and debates with insults then they may not convince whoever they are arguing with but if we make that a crime then anyone can silence anyone else by claiming to feel insulted.
I made a meme that explains it:
