: Freedom of speech is the most important right any human has. It is the right to submit ideas, to reject untruthes and define our existance.
: Fight for it to the end.although what you say is a rather noble and endearing statement, and true in some respects, i beg to differ on a few points:
the freedom of speech is not a fundamental right - people like you and i would consider it to be such, because we have most likely been born and raised all our lives in first-world industrialized nations. consequently, we tend to think of 'rights' as being freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of press, et cetera. however, 'rights' can mean other things to those that are in less economically prosperous nations that are currently undergoing industrialization or have not yet undergone industrialization. rights, to such people, could mean the right to reject labour in a nike sweat shop for something more fitting of a human being, and not an animal, or the right of a child to live _as a child_, not as the facilitator of a household after both parents have been killed due to political or military incidents. the rights you speak of - 'industrialized freedoms', as it were, are hardly basic - they are secondary to the basic human rights that sometimes take the forms of food, clothing, and shelter that so many men, women and children around the world are still being denied. agreed, freedom of speech is an industrialized right that we need to fight to preserve, as it is an industrialized right that constantly comes under fire. however, before we are to fight for what _we_ have, let us first stretch out our hand to fellow people that could not ever dream of considering industrialized freedoms as being basic and fundamental.
