Freedom Of Speech And Individual Rights Essay

In a civil society it is generally understood that people posses the right to many individual freedoms, including the freedom of speech. In liberal democracies these rights are protected by governments through social contract and consent to be governed. A conflict that generally arises with freedom of speech is: how far can freedom of speech go? In many realms of socio-political debate the idea of free speech versus hate speech is often brought to attention. In a liberal democratic society freedom of speech must be allowed to the fullest extent so long as it does not harm the individual rights of others. Offensive speech must be allowed as long as it does not infringe on a persons right to life, liberty and property. In the following paper I will address why freedom of speech is important and what actually …show more content…
I believe a goo d place to begin looking at the concept of individual freedoms is John Locke. Looking a John Locke’s second treatise, Locke believes that humans are inherently born with individual liberties. People have the right to life, liberty, and property. Locke believed that by nature people have the right to pursue their own lifestyle and enjoy advantage of their own liberties without intervention so long as they do not infringe on the individual liberties of another person. According to Locke as people we form civil society and states, in order to protect individual liberties. As people we give up some rights as a civil contract in order to have protected rights through a legitimate state. Civil societies original job was to create consent amongst members to create a protection of individual liberties. This includes the liberty of freedom of speech. Freedom of speech is an individual liberty that, thus in the simplest of civil societies is a principle that should be protected not blocked. Civil