What is ‘Freedom of Speech?

[True Blue Door]

20. To be pedantic

it means that no authority or other coercive force will prevent you from communicating your thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and opinions, and none may retaliate for that communication in any way that goes beyond an equal exercise of expression.

Legitimate restrictions only exist when expression has no communicative function other than to coerce the actions of another: Saying "give me your money or die" is robbery and threat, not communication.

However, like all morals, there is a frothing borderline of dangerous quandaries in free speech. It is speech to advocate violence (e.g., promoting war, or violent resistance to oppression), but not speech to threaten violence - i.e., indicating an intention to act. The exact border is left up to common sense and decency to determine, which inevitably leads to cases of official abuse against some and impunity by others.

But anyone may retaliate against another's speech in a way that is also speech: You can disagree politely; you can argue intelligently; you can express your opinion that this person is a moron or a lunatic or a vicious degenerate, so long as the disparagement isn't hyperbolic enough to represent slanderous falsehood if your antagonist is a private citizen (another border reliant on common sense); you can withdraw your association from them socially, politically, or economically (e.g., ostracism, boycott); and you can even hypocritically demand that authorities silence them.

The rules are (or need to be) different for public officials, and for scarce communications resources regulated by licensed monopoly (e.g., broadcasting). Since they possess a disproportionate capacity to coerce through their words, they are obligated to be more responsible, and we are obligated to hold them to a higher standard of accountability.

In my view, the FCC is currently in extreme violation of its responsibilities. It exercises basically no restraint on violent or bigoted programming on licensed monopoly broadcast programs, and will not require balance in broadcast news coverage, and yet clings to stringent regulation of "dirty words" and nudity with hefty fines for violators. In fact, the rare times when it does stomp on violent imagery is when the imagery is real, being shown by news reports, and is politically inconvenient to conservatives. FCC policies bear no resemblance to morality or ethics of any kind.