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Soberingly, even the US understanding of freedom of speech seems to have started out as isegoria + x and developed into parrhesia + y only over time, by court rulings aka chance/accident and with many setbacks aka incarcerations. pimlicojournal.co.uk/p/…
And the Biden years demoed that even from the current level, a fallback can never be ruled out.
Soberingly, even the US understanding of freedom of speech seems to have started out as isegoria + x and developed into parrhesia + y only over time, by court rulings aka chance/accident and with many setbacks aka incarcerations. https://www.pimlicojournal.co.uk/p/the-real-origins-of-american-freedom
And the Biden years demoed that even from the current level, a fallback can never be ruled out.
I would argue that the American view resembles parrhesia, because they approach the question from a different angle than Europe (or Biden). I am always very careful about principles, even if the practical case is irrelevant by itself. It wasn't that 'free speech' itself changed, initially, under attempts by democrats and others to redefine our country, it was that the view on the government, the state, and their powers, changed. More and more became subject to administrative, judicial, and government review and control, and as such free speech shifted from resembling parrhesia to resembling isegoria.
Free speech and the attacks on it are only the symptoms of a much more important, underlying change that was attempted to insert into American practice and thinking.
Just finished reading the article you cited. Great work by the author!
There is one remark I want to make: the author, being British, is looking at the discussion from British/European point of view, where the state has broad, all-encompassing powers, where the US government does not. That difference in foundation is vital here. It is true that the current understanding of 'free speech' as such took a long way to get to where it is, but that does not mean it is 'new' or 'not constitutional', I think. Just as justices grappled with race and personhood, getting it wrong several times before getting it right, they employ, they wrestled with 'free speech' and the many confliction rights, freedoms, and consequences that come with it.
In the US, the focus was always on both the individual and the society, not on the state (as in nation-state, and its power apparatus). This was the view of Madison, as the article points out, even as it tries to dilute his views with that of 'many Americans' who disagreed with him.
"Despite Madison and Jefferson’s personal views, the narrow, ‘Blackstonian’ view of press freedom had legally prevailed." How so? Legally prevailed, because SCOTUS did not rule against the Acts in question? Since they were repealed, there was no longer a reason for SCOTUS to rule on them, making the lack of such ruling irrelevant. Madison's point about post-publication restrictions by government were similarly never defeated, either, and resurrected by the Warren courts. How can it be argued that this view by Madison and Jefferson on the 3rd amendment is unconstitutional?
We do indeed see a searching of where the line between dangerous speech and acceptable speech is, as we all agree that 'free speech' is not 'absolute'. Yelling fire in a theater, calling directly for violence and murder, even actual slander and libel are not to be accepted by a civilized people. Recently, a number of libel cases have been won, famously the Nick Sandmann from Covington High (the boy with the MAGA hat at the DC Right to Life March), even with the very high bar, and more recently several by Trump and his followers (against ABC, or Pfizer -still in court, but favorable towards Trump), have shown that when actual malicious libel happens, and not political or social speech attacking opponents, it gets shut down.
It supports a robust and bare-knuckle version of democratic speech and exchange of ideas, where everything can be listened to, and where solid pushback is part and parcel of the process, expected even.