• partofthevoice@lemmy.zip
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    11 hours ago

    Not really. Free speech is a cultural construct. It doesn’t exist without a huge swath of pre-agreed norms regarding rights, speech, freedom, … I’ll have you know, there are modern philosophers who argue against human rights. They would say human rights language pretends to be objective and universal, but it floats without a metaphysical anchor (unlike in the past) and in practice they only exist if a sovereign power recognizes them.