Free Speech
The emperor of all rights; relative comparisons make this abundantly clear.
The wellspring from which all other rights flow, which means that if someone seeks to limit it, then all other rights immediately suffer degradation as well.
Speaking is an action that is indistinguishable from thought, which makes it special in a manner that should preoccupy our thoughts on a regular basis.
An examination of the function, value, and meaning of speech requires we use speech, and so the more difficult we make it to discuss, the less we know about how it works. Seeing as it is indistinguishable from thought, the more free our speech, the more free our thinking, and the better equipped we are to make sense of the world on our own terms.
Free speech is a concept that is publicly supported by virtually everyone but remains conspicuously under attack at every second by a litany of interested parties.
This discordance occurs due to the incongruity of human reasoning among average citizens and the motivated reasoning of elites. Free speech is the most frequent victim of the incoherent predisposition that some things need to be destroyed in order to save them. The second most frequent victim is democracy.
Every human right is subjected to this at regular intervals whenever it is politically convenient, and the aggressors always find a way of rationalizing their inability to play well with others.
See: FREEDOM
Revised: 13 Jan 2023
