Random Name 4 said:
Just a question, do you really have free speech if the government decides what speech is protected or not? For instance, the government can decide that videogames aren't protected as free speech, and ban them. What's to say the government can't decide that films aren't protected as free speech. So my question for the day is, is your speech truly protected?
First, a point: freedom in the context you describe is not freedom at all. What you describe is a "lack of consequence". There is no action without consequence in this world. I might say something that is free of legal consequence for example but it might bring physical harm to my person. (For example, I could go to the depths of an inner city neighborhood in LA and start spouting off racially charged obscenities. Such action is protected speech but I would, almost certainly, come to harm if I did so).
But, with respect to the question, this is not the first time a government has tried to limit speech in the US. It isn't even close to the Alien and Sedition act of 1798, that forbade, among other things, speaking out against a member of government. That such freedoms are infringed upon is expected, and it was because of this very expectation that the US governmental system is structured as it was (and, yes, I'm aware that there are plenty of complications, caveats and whatnot on this point). Yet, even the most liberal interpretation of free speech will find a limit. One can, for example, incite a panic with speech. Do you protect speech who's sole aim is to generate chaos and destruction? One can also spread information known to be false. Is a lie protected?
In a very general way, there is Freedom of Speech precisely because one can, without legal ramification, speak ill of the government or of a policy. Such freedom from consequence was all but unheard of at the founding of the Nation. But this freedom from legal consequence is extended far beyond simply criticizing the government: it includes any speech that does not, as a direct result, cause immeasurably more harm than good. Thus, I cannot tell a lie in the legal process without risking a trial of my own because doing so undermines the very idea of justice. I cannot incite a panic in a theater by shouting fire because only harm comes out of such a circumstance. Obscenity falls under this as well. A material is considered obscene if and only if these three conditions are met:
* Whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards", would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest,
* Whether the work depicts/describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable state law,
* Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.[3]
(<a href=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test>source).
Freedom, as described above, does not truly exist because there is always going to be a consequence. Most nations in the world apply a legal consequence to a wider variety of speech than the US does. If such perfect freedom is not attainable, can we say that a given nation has Freedom of Speech? Certainly not. But since that definition offers no useful distinction between a totalitarian dictatorship and a pure democracy, it is clearly not a useful definition. Thus we find that, for practical purposes, freedom of speech is approached as you lower the kinds of speech that have a legal consequence associated with them. At an arbitrary point (generally defined by the freedom to criticize those in power), a nation is considered to have free speech.
Of course, it must be noted that, since there is a consequence for any action, one is only limited in what they can do by physical laws and their own perception. The universe will not stop a man from speaking ill of the government in North Korea, but the brutal consequence of such a thing is almost certainly enough that he would no longer see it as being an option. Thus, you are free to try and do anything that physical law allows so long as you are willing to accept the consequences of your action.
