How Do We Share Freedom Of Speech?

Should one person’s right to say what they want always outweigh another person’s right not to hear it?

The most simplistic definition of freedom would be “the ability to do whatever we want whenever we want to”. A wild animal, for example, is free in this way. It can go where it pleases and sleep when it feels like it. It can behave however it chooses. Wild animals are constrained only by their instincts and desires.

Humans aren’t so fortunate. Mainly because we aren’t so wild. The price of living in a society, with all of its comforts and protections, is that we’re obliged to accept significant restrictions on our would-be freedom (otherwise known as laws). These restrictions control almost every aspect of our lives, from where we can eat to where we can live. What we can wear and when we have to wear it. They even control what we can say. The only animals which have to deal with such unreasonable constraints are the ones who live among us. They’ve given up their wildness too after all.

Viewed through this lens, the current debate about freedom of expression isn’t about freedom in absolute terms, but how much freedom we should sacrifice for the sake of offering greater protections to others.