The only snag being, only humans (and for some purposes, only American citizens) are able to enjoy the rights endowed by the first ten amendments, at least until the Peta nuts get things changed. Otherwise you'd be up for murder if you ran over your neighbour's mutt. And I was also going to run the argument that barking, not conveying anything intelligible, is not "speech". But the supremes have already decided that a woman removing her clothes in front of an audience is "protected speech" so I'm not sure about that one...

The justices were right about that last one. It may be very basic communication, and it may not be communicating anything particularly high-brow, but it's still communication. Come to that, it's a form of probably the most popular message there is among humans: "Look at me."

There's no doubt it's communication, but why should it be deemed a part of that special category of communication, protected speech? There must surely be some social utility to the communication to justify society granting it the powerful juju of protection.

Protected speech is not a special category of communication. You either protect all communication or you have government officials deciding which bits are protected and which aren't, which have "social utility" and which don't. Well done to the Supreme Court for resisting the temptation to be those officials.

Also, the whole point of the First Amendment (and, indeed, the entire US Constitution) is that society isn't granting anything to anyone; rather, people have inalienable rights that are theirs by dint of simply being human, and government is denied the power to take away those rights.

In fact the courts draw the line between protected and unprotected speech all the time, particularly in this country, with its weird libel laws. Think of the "shouting fire in a crowded theatre" example.

I'm not particularly comfortable with rights dogma: better results could be achieved by imposing obligations, which is how Judaism does it, and this avoids the tricky problems of where rights stop: it's all too easy to find rights such as the right to employment and the right to food and water etc while conveniently ignoring the question of the costs of enforcing such rights.

> Think of the "shouting fire in a crowded theatre" example.

The point of that example is to illustrate how to balance rights with responsibilities. You do have the right to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, and with that right comes the responsibility to accept the consequences of your actions — specifically, to accept that they are the consequences of your actions. If the consequences are a death or two, your responsibility for them makes you a murderer. That doesn't mean you had no right to shout "Fire!" in the first place.


> particularly in this country, with its weird libel laws.

Bad example. We don't have freedom of speech in this country.


> better results could be achieved by imposing obligations

And who does the imposing? Who decides which obligations? The trouble with that approach is that you need first to give the government the power to impose obligations. And, if they can impose good obligations, they can impose bad ones.

More on freedom of speech: I see Stephen Pollard took down his post about Interpal and now assures us that "the charity operates as an entirely legitimate organisation for the relief of suffering and no evidence has ever been produced to suggest otherwise." As if. Even its bloody logo shows the whole of Israel as Palestine. Every other European country has chucked the bastards out. America and Israel have the evidence, the stupid UK government simply closes its eyes and feeds the Board of Deputies to Interpal's lawyers. Which is why SP took down his post. And why I suppose you'll delete this comment...

I have to admit to never having heard of Interpal. (I'm not always as up on current affairs as I might give the impression of being. Hey, I can't know everything.) If it's true that they've been chucked out of every other European country, considering some of the groups that haven't been chucked out, they must be pretty bad in comparison (at least in the eyes of those countries' governments, I carefully add).

I can't see anything potentially litigious in your comment. Maybe they aren't bastards and their logo isn't bloody, but they're both figures of speech, I believe.

Or are you worried that the UK Government will sue you for calling them "stupid"?

That might be a reasonable fear these days, actually.

Well I didn't see anything that litigious in SP's comments either, but they were instantly picked up by the Islamic websites, with comments like "Another case for Interpal's lawyers?" (Google "Stephen Pollard Interpal".) I suppose you wouldn't have heard of them, only the Jewish Board of Deputies apologised for calling them a terrorist organisation recently to avoid a libel case, got coverage in the Jewish press. Intelligence.org has some interesting stuff on Interpal (4th and 5th results for a Google on "Interpal"); it says IP is on the EU terror list, and so I supposed that would have led to them being proscribed by European governments . And I suppose I was partly tongue-in-cheek, but as you say, you never know these days...

You do have the right to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, and with that right comes the responsibility to accept the consequences of your actions — specifically, to accept that they are the consequences of your actions. If the consequences are a death or two, your responsibility for them makes you a murderer. That doesn't mean you had no right to shout "Fire!" in the first place.

Extraordinary. Presumably I similarly have the 'right' to stick a knife into my mother, as long as I accept that my responsibility for doing so makes me a murderer...

Yup. Otherwise, how would you ever have a right to self-defense? You have the right to stab anyone who tries to kill you (including your mother — it happens). What do you think happens to that right when they're not trying to kill you? You think all your rights switch on and off constantly, depending on the intentions of everyone around you? That's not a right; it's a court case.

The whole point of a right is that it's yours; you have it; it doesn't depend on circumstances. That's why the UNCHR isn't full of the word "unless".

"There is only one human right: the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the one human responsibility: the responsibility to accept the consequences."

No, there is no right to shout fire in a crowded theater, unless, of course, there is actually a fire in the theater. In the US, free speech does not cover speech that might incite a riot or the right to make or distribute child pornography, for example, or to commit libel, although American libel laws are a lot more liberal than their British equivalents. And having a written constitution doesnt always save you from the living breathing constitutionalists; they will simply twist the words of the text around until they get the justification that they are looking for.

> there is no right to shout fire in a crowded theater, unless, of course, there is actually a fire in the theater.

Like I said, rights don't contain the word "unless".

What if you think the theatre's on fire, but you're wrong? What if the fire's small enough to be handled by the sprinkler systems and everyone would be safer staying put, but you wrongly think they'd be safer outside? What if it really is on fire, but you're a terrorist and it's all part of a plot to drive people out of the theatre into the blast of a waiting bomb? What if there's no fire, but you know there's a homicidal maniac in the third row about to start shooting people?

Your rights don't fluctuate constantly depending on what's going on around you. Either you have the right to shout "Fire!" or you don't. If that right is so dependent on circumstance that it would take a lawyer to figure out whether it really exists from one moment to the next, it's not a right, because the whole point of a right is that it enables you to know how you may act.


> In the US, free speech does not cover speech that might incite a riot or the right to make or distribute child pornography, for example, or to commit libel

Sure, the courts get involved when two people's rights conflict. For instance, the right to create child pornography clashes with the rights of children not to be raped. The courts have rightly decided that the latter trumps the former. However, the USSC has stated that laws which ban child pornography that has been created using, for instance, computer graphics or adult actors who only look underage are unconstitutional because they do infringe the First Amendment.

So according to you, I have the right to go on a rampage of rape and murder around the country.

I suggest that this notion of "right" has no useful content, since it covers absolutely everything, and makes no distinction between things that you're *allowed* to do without being sent to prison, and things which will get you sent to prison for ever.

Also it makes no distinction whatsoever between regimes which infringe unacceptably on peoples' freedoms and those which don't. E.g people in Stalin's Russia had the "right" to criticise Stalin, so long as they accept the consequences, namely being tortured to death in a gulag.

> people in Stalin's Russia had the "right" to criticise Stalin, so long as they accept the consequences

No, I said "responsibility", not "consequences". If you believe that criticising Stalin makes you responsible for your own torture, you are a fool.

I suggest that this is a very useful concept of rights, since it implies responsibility rather than entitlement.

The "unless" approach to rights leads directly to the British "right" of self-defense, which is now so hedged around with unlesses that ever more British people are afraid to defend themselves when physically attacked in case they get sent to prison.

Let's be clear: according to you, do I have the "right" to go on a rampage of rape and murder around the country?

And did people in Stalin's Russia have the "right" to criticise the government?

> do I have the "right" to go on a rampage of rape and murder around the country?

Yes, and you have the responsibility not to, and everyone else has the right not to be attacked by you. Their rights outweigh yours, obviously.


> And did people in Stalin's Russia have the "right" to criticise the government?

Why are you even asking me that? Is this a trick question? No-one but Stalin had any rights in Stalin's Russia, as well you know. Which has absolutely nothing to do with anything I've written here.

Don't be so grumpy.

I'm simply trying to understand what you mean by "I have the right to perform action y". And I'm failing.

Usually it implies that I will not be sent to prison for performing action y. But as used by you it does not.

In modern Britain, it seems, I have the right to go on a rampage of rape and murder (even though I'll be sent to prison for ever), but in Stalin's Russia I would not have had the right to go on a rampage of rape and murder, because... I'd have been tortured to death in a gulag?

> Don't be so grumpy.

I'm not. I just don't understand why you keep implying that I think people had rights under Stalin.


> Usually it implies that I will not be sent to prison for performing action y.

This may be the source of your confusion. That's not what it usually implies at all. I refer you to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is basically a list of things for which half the population of the Earth risk jail on a regular basis.

For what it's worth, I don't believe in the concept of "human rights", per se.
Now hold on, I know that sounds barmy, especially when I state that I believe all human life is precious, (eg, I'm the whole "pro-life" thing as opposed to "pro-choice"). But I think it depends on your definition of what a "right" is.
Many people look on the word "right" to mean something intrinsic and unquestionable, something that just "is" because it...well, "is". But someone once asked me "do you believe you have the right not to be tortured?" and this forced me to think about the meaning of the word more deeply. At first I replied "yes, of course". Then I realised that my self-proclamation meant sweet FA unless the potential torturer also agreed with me. If he didn't, and was stronger than me, then what could I do about it? How would I enforce my so-called "right"? And I realised that the crucial word was "(en)force".
So, in my opinion, my "rights" are merely what someone more powerful than me (the law, or the government, or my kidnapper) grants me the power to do. And in the end, the logical conclusion I came to was (and you're gonna love this bit), "might is right". All we can really hope for is that he who is mightiest is also the most benevolent. That's my tuppenceworth.

Ok. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a list of things which people *should* be allowed to do without being sent to prison (as decreed by the civilised world/people who wrote it).

I'm reasonably certain that it does not include the right to go on a rampage of rape and murder, and is therefore very seriously at odds with the word "right" as you're currently using it.

Unless I'm mistaken we're still at a point where you've said that in modern Britain I have the right to go on a rampage of rape and murder (even though I'll be sent to prison), but in Stalin's Russia I would not have had that right.

Care to clarify?

Well, first of all, I did mention up above that, in Britain, we don't even have freedom of speech. You asked a question about a definition of rights while, unbeknownst to me, assuming that my answer would be about Britain. We don't even have a right to hurt an attacker in self-defense here, so no, obviously we don't have a right to hurt anyone else at any other time.

The rest of my answer's on the front page now.