austranger
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Opinionated Sod
Posts: 1506
adelaide
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Often forgotten these days..With rights come responsibilities.
You are free to say what you think/feel/believe. You must accept responsibility for the results of your free speaking. If you speak to incite violence or criminality you must accept that whatever happens consequently is your responsibility, no others. If that is legal prosecution you have no redress, you brought it upon yourself. If your speaking causes others to treat you differently or to take action against you then that too is your own responsibility. You do not have the right to be heard just because you have the right to speak, you cannot force others to listen. If others act incorrectly because you speak then that is a shared responsibility, you cannot escape that by saying it wasn't you who acted. If you speak and others take offense it is their responsibility for how they respond, but it is still your responsibility for having spoken, their response does not excuse your speaking. If you speak insensitively or offensively you cannot blame others for responding inappropriately, the decision to speak thus was yours alone.
A lot of the problems we face today with bigots, and other extremes of one sort or another is the communication agencies, the media etc, if they chose not to publicise certain things, hate speech, ridicule, incitement of any kind, then these voices would not be heard beyond the immediate area of the speaker, thus lessening the chance of harm.
I may well not have covered every case or condition but I think I've got across the basics, I hope so anyway.
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