Eight Values of Free Expression

 One of the many things that set the idea of America apart from the world during its founding days, was the theme of truly free speech. Thought radical by most and dangerous by others, it is fair to say that the new founded country was taking a high level risk. Evidently however, the reward was worth it. Today the values of free expression are key parts of our democracy and the basic foundation for what makes our society, for better or worse. It's given a platform to everyone to share their creations and beliefs, which has reaped its own side effects that have impacted the way the law is interpreted, and even portrayed. In particular, this post will analyze the theory of "Individual Self Fulfillment", which when summarized outlines how identities and connections are created throughout the creation of free expression. 

The aforementioned concept is also known as "Self Actualization", and is one of the reason why modern day technology has been able to reach so many people today. For example, several social media apps since the early 2000's have adapted to give everyone on their platform the opportunity to spread their opinions. This have given birth to online communities, specifically in applications such as discord. Discord is an online communication app where people can look up topics that they are interested in and find communities that are talking about them. It can range from having one to fifty people, who all are able to speak freely about whatever they like under a moderator. Options to do things like this exist on app like twitter as well now, with the new innovation called "twitter space" coming into the fray a few months ago.

To better understand why the idea of self fulfillment is so important to society, one must look at it from a philosophical standpoint. To briefly explain what this means, it refers to the "actualization of potential", an idea from Aristotle. When specific potentialities or capacities end up getting fulfilled or exercised, they start to give humans a peace of mind. Without this exercise or expression, the condition of the mind begins to deteriorate, negatively impacting the individual and in turn the society. Potential in humans can develop in different ways through free choice, and they become comfortable knowing that they can be any person they want to be in life. In other words, people can choose to live however they want within the mental respect. This of course is an underlying theme of the idea of fulfillment, which aids the goal of a human becoming good naturally, as their untamed personality is revealed.  

Finally, upon analyzing how the freedom of speech affects self fulfillment socially and morally, the way they are mean't to be protected today must be looked at. The most obvious point to make is that the first amendments job is the maintain free speech. Court cases that go all the way back to 1799 (Runkel Vs. Winemiller), have protected the freedom of religious establishments, protected peoples opinions on religion in 1859 (Commonwealth v Cooke), and even the criticism of the court that makes these rulings in 1907(Patterson v Colorado). Today, a person cannot be held legally liable for a crime simply for writing ill about a person or topic, unless they are dangerous lies. The right to assemble peacefully protects people on social media platforms, in public spaces, and several other public properties. In individual moments, the public can misinterpret what these rights actually are and what they mean, but the protection of these freedoms were mean't to be people rights for centuries in this nation.