RE: There is No Free Speech

TO: Everyone

FR: Every Culture at Every Scale

Politicians and commentators dissing the NBA for not exercising ‘America’s most cherished freedom’ are just posturing. Those same politicians and commentators have severe restraints on their own self-expression and they know it.

Pure Freedom of Speech doesn’t happen anywhere and I’m not sure if it even should.

There are obvious legal limits to self-expression, well known from the ‘fire in a crowded cinema’ example. But that’s just the obvious, tip of the iceberg part.

There are further limits, written or unwritten, supported by different cultures, different economic classes, different tribes — that result in consequences when they are exceeded.

These limits to self-expression are set at every scale — internally as individuals, within relationships and families, in the workplace, and at the level of Community, Region, and Nation.

The limits are set by the most powerful, although it is not always obvious what power is and how it is exercised. Find out who you can’t criticize, who you can’t make jokes about. That’s who’s setting the limits of self-expression and enforcing them somehow.