Blog Post #3: Eight Values of Free Expression

Eight total values of free expression are utilized in our lives today, them being the Marketplace of Ideas, Participation in Self-Government, Stable Change, Individual Self-Fulfillment, Check on Governmental Power, Promote Tolerance, Promote Innovation, and Protect Dissent. 

1. The Marketplace of Ideas: This promotes the idea of not requiring a license to print or publish any piece of ideation. This follows with not needing governmental approval to publish the piece either. This was originally promoted by John Milton, an English poet, and pamphleteer, who wanted to speak out against the need for governments to approve the publishing of most works. He spoke out against this in his pamphlet, Areopagitica, which protested against Parliament's awful requirement of approving and licensing any and all published works, mainly books.

This resonates with me the most due to it being one of, if not the most prevalent value of free expression that is seen everywhere, through media like TikTok and Instagram, newspapers, online articles, video sources, and many more. The way I garner and learn further information in my day-to-day life is through this online media, which is so prominent in everyone's lives. This is how I learned about things like the election results, and inauguration recordings, especially with a specific moment with Elon Musk recently. We need this to function as a society, and when it's disturbed and taken, as can be seen in some places, like North Korea, the overall livelihoods of people are diminished heavily and sustain huge blows not only things like their morale and understanding of the world, but continue getting hit with more restrictions once the government realizes they're able to do it.

2. Participation in Self-Government: The practice of providing everyone with participation in the governmental structure by allowing free speech to take place properly by all individuals, especially politicians. Politicians cannot be allowed to be restricted in their communication since that will be a means of an unfair election. For example, if a platform like Twitter attempted to silence a current running politician for speaking about their plans or ideas on what they want to further explore, so their followers and people voting for them gain a deeper understanding of their campaign, Twitter wouldn't be allowed to silence them for this reason. 

A platform is unable to ban or fully restrict a politician from their platform, especially for an opinion on said politician. They must be able to provide their stance and points without harm to their social media from the companies or government attempting to silence them. 

3. Stable Change: A value that showcases how upset citizens can express themselves through venting or speaking their minds to others. This is thought to make these disgruntled citizens less likely to resort to violence against others than if they kept quiet, a more pessimistic view of the world, but definitely not wrong. This value brings out a lot of bad in others and has caused some apps, like Instagram, to be overrun with people spewing garbage and hate-filled messages but is definitely vital to the good of the people. Others can monitor and find out the types of people to ignore and what to watch out for in others, which is a big plus, but definitely makes some areas of the internet rampant with negativity. 

The government not attempting to suppress this value is always a better option since when people keep themselves suppressed with their emotions or struggles, a non-changeable outcome usually occurs. This has been quite recently seen in the Nashville sixteen-year-old school shooter, with the student keeping his struggles bottled up without letting others know, only posting some harrowing messages to his little screwed-up and disgusting corner of the internet before enacting an awful plan of attack.

 

4. Individual Self-Fulfillment: A value that is vital to creativity and expression, advocating for people to express themselves, create their own identity for others, and find others like them. The leading activist for this was none other than C. Edwin Baker with his book Human Liberty and Freedom of Speech. Throughout this book, he primarily argued about how we need the protection of human liberty, utilizing that as the justification for the freedom of expression.

This is very important to me because, without this, creativity wouldn't thrive, and people wouldn't create more, think more, or act more in exclusive and fun ways that others can get behind. Whether that being in smaller groups or larger, it benefits everyone equally and gives places for people to call home.

5. Check on Governmental Power: This value is essential to the working elements of the government through the society they listen to. It creates a sense of understanding on both sides and keeps the government in check so they're not able to abuse their power against us. 

The public is able to keep the governing in check, so society is able to continue on their path of progression, rather than degrading due to incompetence. 

6. Promote Tolerance: Promoting tolerance is an interesting value, an expressive action of acceptance that is intertwined with hatred. We learn to be a more advanced society by becoming accepting and tolerant towards aspects of life we don't enjoy. This blatantly encourages further hate speech from anyone and everyone, but I can definitely agree that society develops better as a whole if it becomes tolerant. 

This is mainly due in fact to me working that way, I become tolerant very fast as a person to basically anything new to me, hurtful or not, and it's actually helped me become a much more patient and understanding person as a whole. 

7. Promote Innovation: This value strikes me as an offshoot of Individual Self-Fulfillment, creating a bigger avenue for creativity to blossom in people and showcasing multitudes of ways that people can become interesting in their own ways. This becomes just as important to me because of that, since I believe that creativity is one of the most vital things to being human. It's the thing I look for the most in people and in myself especially, and plants fertile seeds of ideation in people's brains the more it's realized. 

8. Protect Dissent: One of, if not the most important value to our human rights. All citizens can criticize and disagree with a governing body, and we're able to voice our opinions against their choices. The First Amendment protects all views against anything, and this is no different even if it's a governing body. 

This is another value that springs forth an earlier connection, this time being with the Check on Governmental Power, where we're able to check in on the government and
explain our viewpoint as a society so they aren't able to abuse their power.