Yaron Brook | Free Speech
Interesting Question: Which is more important-Free Speech or Property Rights?
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"Locke emphasized that property rights were your primary right. Property rights imply the right to free speech, but the right to free speech does not imply property rights.
I think the ending about profiling was disappointing. A government does not have the right to stop people unless they have specific evidence and a warrant from a judge. TSA is unconstitutional, violates our natural rights, and irrational. Now if the airlines want to search people, or profile them that does not violate the constitution or our natural rights. It's their property and they can set the conditions for using their services and property."
If one, as I do, accepts that my reasoning and the conclusions and ideas about reality thus reached are mine (which they are), are therefor my property and I as a free individual have the unalienable right to use that property as I desire, except in the case of physical force or fraud, then that gives primacy to the property right. I also have the right to the life I have and the right to improve the conditions of that life and the only tool or thing I'm born with that I can bring to that effort is my reason and the results of that reason, attempting to control, limit, or squelch the expression of those results is simply an attempt to control, limit, or eliminate reason--but also deny to me the use of my reason and intellect--to deny to me the right of life.
But it's the understanding that the tools of reasoning and rational logical thinking are mine (property right) that is critical (as are all the other expressions of and definitions of rights derived from that one premise of it's my life). Any attack on my expressions and reasoning is an attack on my life and is anti-human.
Your id is your essence. To destroy your id is to destroy your essence. ("anti-human.")
O.A.
Maybe I should just ride my horse amongst the clouds, eh?
Jan
What if you just pick up the baby and walk away?
Yikes.
Jan
Jan
I didn't mean to say that. They had SSNs early b/c we opened an investment account the months they were born. They probably did get them at the hospital b/c I don't recall taking newborns to a gov't office. I was extremely sleep-deprived, so who knows.
I was born in '75, and I seem to remember being around ten (10) when I got my SSN.
I understand that his priority in the speech was not necessarily to cover all wrongs, but to stay on track of the attacks on Free Speech and the true import of that and what it means to the ability of a man to live and better his very life or go directly to physical force. What did impress me was his emphasis on the deeper issue of it not just being Islam, but more the ability of others to disagree and to argue whether it was Islam, Christianity, or the altruistic craziness of US politics and Statism.
Unfortunately he will never get though to the muslim world or muslims in general. he certainly will never get through to the white muslim. The all do not think at all. Thinking is not something the muslim world choses to try.
Expression of that thought similarly is the conscious act of manipulation of one's environment to some degree or another. Now I can readily see the argument that by the very act of manipulation one is similarly claiming "possession" or "ownership" of any item one manipulates - even if only temporarily. The expression to interact presupposes both the capability and the permissibility to act, but again, both suppositions are the result of thought - not the result of possession because until one actually attempts to manipulate the entity within the environment, one actually does not assert one's "ownership", which I assert is only evidenced by action on its behalf. Thus I must conclude that property rights are an assertion based on expression of thought.
This discussion is about natural rights, ethics, and politics. Show me how free speech lead logically to property rights, to understanding why murder is wrong, burglary, contracts, torts, etc. All of this and free speech follow from property rights and self-ownership. From free speech nothing follows. Does free speech mean you have to give me a microphone, a printing press, a radio station?
I thought that was what was requested.
"Show me how free speech lead logically to property rights..."
I think you are thinking of only the expression of free speech when it comes to voicing your opinion in a public forum, i.e. persuading others of one's opinion. If that is the case, then expression of speech becomes dependent on someone else to hear that speech, and I would agree that that would beg the issue of self-identification as a precursor.
I am looking at expression of thought in its infant stages - when there are no other agents present. Rights exist independent of others, or so I am told, so I am examining the concept of freedom of expression within that sphere - an absence of other agent entities. Within that absence, there would be only one agent: one entity with the cognizance of self separate from environment. But is recognizing one's own bounds by definition "ownership"? I don't think so. Again, ownership is a result of responsibility and ability to act, which are dependent on not only thought, but the ability to turn thought into motion, i.e. expression. Without action, there is no ownership because there is no responsibility and no expression. Ownership is void under these circumstances.
Thus I can only conclude that ownership is subsequent to
A) thought itself,
B) recognition of self separate from environment,
C) capacity to affect environment (i.e. motion, energy conversion, etc.) and
D) conscious acceptance of responsibility for some part of the environment.
Yaron Brook was not asking whether metaphysically we have free speech or metaphysically about whether we own ourselves. I suspect his answer to the first would be of course. His whole talk was about Muslims trying to silence speech using violence and the Western governments failing to support free speech - a natural rights - political issue.
The metaphysical question might be interesting, but I think it is poorly formed as originally stated, not necessarily as you stated it.
Like all that was in the former Bill of Rights they are equal and were equally worth defending.
There ends the history lesson.
"It's often better to be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt."
Without watching the video (which I'll do later) I would vote for Property Rights. With that right, I could escape to my property to not have to listen if I so desired.
Much of it seemed obvious, but that's his point, I think: the enlightenment gave us these things that we now take for granted. And there are people today who want to go back to the dark ages.
I liked the part about free speech under attackin Europe. I haven't been to continental Europe in in 15 years, but one thing that struck me was how people thought exceptions to free speech related to the Holocaust were fine. According to Brook, it's gotten worse since then.
I had mixed throughts on his call for US presidents to respond with aggressive language to anyone who threatens someone because of something he says or writes. I like to think any president thinks that and maybe writes a scathing "you don't dare!" message, but he deletes it and writes a measured political response. I'm glad Brook raises the question: if gov't's only legitimate job is to protect liberty, why pussyfoot around when someone threatens it.
I didn't like his comparison at the very end of gov't profiling in search for a specific murderer out on the loose to a blanket right to question anyone who looks guilty of something. He immediately says a blanket policy could be taken overboard, and he's not for that.