From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Wed Jan 15 2003 - 12:03:11 MST
> > It is probably true that
> > there are universals in this form: a culture that restrains or
> > punishes political speech is probably doomed to failure, so
> > expressing this universal in terms of a "right to free speech"
> > is perfectly reasonable.
>
> What's wrong with simply endorsing the simpler claim "Our
> society and all modern ones should endorse the legal right
> to freedom of speech"?
Because yours is an ethical claim ("a society should..."),
where mine is descriptive ("a society that does...will..."),
and it is mine that is therefore "simpler", because the
ethical claim only follows from the descriptive one if you
add in one or more assumed values (though it may be as simple
a value as continued existence).
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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