This, by definition, means you're not a free speech absolutist. Everyone draws the line somewhere and the current collective is that existing laws are mostly good enough, with some movements to curtail things like bullying and online hate speech (although something like requiring platforms to review every comment / beam everything to the government would not be healthy for giving society)
Could you defend why? A law that punishes or throws you in jail for speech is a restriction on free speech, regardless of how long ago some congress voted on it.
Yes, the issue is free speech. That right doesn’t give you the right to commit crimes like fraud. Nobody who self describes or is described as a free speech absolutist believes in decriminalizing fraud, sedition, perjury, etc. It means, as it’s colloquially used, someone who doesn’t believe in restricting speech in absence of one of those crimes. Our forefathers arguably fall into that group. It is literally the #1 amendment. They were Protestants. This was a, perhaps thee, defining issue for America.
> Nobody who self describes or is described as a free speech absolutist believes in decriminalizing fraud, sedition, perjury, etc. It means, as it’s colloquially used, someone who doesn’t believe in restricting speech in absence of one of those crimes.
Given almost everyone who replied, including the OP WanderPanda, assumed you meant the textbook definition of absolutism (given the discussion about harmful speech that either causes people immediate harm or spreads misinformation about things like vaccines), I don't see how this could be considered the colloquial definition of 'free speech absolutism'. Until it is, it might be more useful to explicitly state "except for speech that harms people" whenever you refer to yourself as such.
If the default understanding is a strawman of what all self-avowed free speech absolutists believe, that will favor the side of those free speech absolutists in the long run. I’m ok with that. I’ll be right now and forever, the rest of you will have to catch up later on when you discover you’ve been fighting a strawman.
Wouldn't this be "free speech absolutist relative to their countries' laws"? It seems like the moniker "free speech absolutist" is meant to be, well, absolute.
