7. Promote Innovation — see Jack Balkin, Living Originalism
A community in which free speech is valued and protected is likely to be a more energized, creative, interesting society as its citizens actively fulfill themselves in many diverse and interesting ways.
Freedom of speech is not something that can be found everywhere in the world. It is, however, one of the founding principals of America. Because of this, America tends to be more informed and has more open communication between its people. We the people of America can speak freely because there is no threat from governmental repercussions.
Of the Eight Values of Free Expression, the seventh value stands out the most. It stresses the importance of freedom within a community to create happiness and creativity. With the freedom our country has given us, individuals are more inspired to speak freely of themselves and their beliefs. I think that this is inspiring because it allows people to think for themselves and express their thoughts. Living in a community where you can think for yourself enables creative thinkers which build even more pronounced creativity. If an individual can share their thoughts and ideas, it gives an opportunity for others to build off of those ideas.
The Renaissance era is a great example of how people learn to build off each other's ideas to create better art. Today in our technical society, some might overlook art as being meaningful. However, the free flow of ideas during this time period reflects perfectly what a “more energized, creative, interesting society” would look like. These artists all grew off of each other's visions and styles and interpreted them in their own ways. This is what freedom of creativity/speech looks like and encourages. When you are surrounded by different thoughts and perspectives, you are able to grow off them and you’re own perceptions become endless.
While this might sound perfect, we are humans meaning nothing is absolute. This means that there are some restrains to speech. One example would include not being able to yell “fire” in a movie theatre. While this is a very simple and well-known example, there is also the sad through of political correctness. In other words, political correctness inhibits people from the actual truths about their surroundings. This discourages people from hearing the whole truth keeping them from being able to fully think for themselves. In extreme conditions, this can even lead to a lack of understanding about the world around you and how people could lean towards communism.
Communism and the freedom of speech are on opposite ends of the spectrum. A country ruled by communism has no freedom of speech. Its citizens are under the government's speech regulations often leading to a community living in fear of their own thoughts. For example, Venezuela just went under strong communist rule and its country and economy has been going downhill ever since. Televisions and radio stations were taken over by the government and were limited to what they could talk about leaving the people with very biased information. With this extreme censorship and fear of speech freedom, it has created a “brain drain” (https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2017/12/28/press-freedom-is-dying-in-venezuela/#5bd6016b58ce) to its citizens. This means that the original "thinkers" of the country flee leaving the economy with only followers. These followers lack the originalism and creativity that might otherwise be there with freedom of speech and expression.
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