Both are inalienable and therefore not granted to me by anyone. I have them by default. However, I would easily choose to risk my life to defend my right to speak.

Ok, but your existence precedes both your ability to speak and your ability to fight for your right to speak. Inalienable or no, both rights can be taken from you, but only one is a requirement for you to have the other. Existence is therefore a fundamental requirement for freedom of speech to exist. People who don't exist can neither speak nor fight for the right to speak.

You asked which would one select. I choose the right to exist with my rights intact. Personally, I feel that the alternative isn't life or an existence worth living.

By choosing to "exist with your rights intact" you're choosing both, so you haven't answered the question. Which would you prefer if you could only have one: Life, or Freedom of Speech?

Could you explain to me how you'd exercise freedom of speech, while dead?

Both or none. Death.

Are you being pedantic to win an internet debate or really trying to understand other perspectives?

Edit: The thing you keep missing though is that one cannot choose. I have the right by default. I can choose not to exercise my rights, but by living I have the right to speech.

If by living, you have the right, then you don't need to fight for it. You already have it.

> If by living, you have the right, then you don't need to fight for it. You already have it.

Exactly. I would not fight _for_ my right, but to protect the rights I already have. In the US, thats why articles in the bill of rights are phrased as they are. The first amendment doesn't say, "congress grants the right speak freely." Instead it is -- congress shall make no law [...] abridging the freedom of speech. This is because I have the right already and the amendment is there to protect it.

Edit: typos, grammar, and clarification

Ok, would you be able to protect your right to free speech if you were dead? Is being alive a requirement for protecting your right to free speech?

This is an intentionally antagonistic line of questioning. The answer has been given clearly. Freedom of speech is equally important as freedom of life. To put it bluntly, you'll have to kill me to silence me.

I'm exercising my ability to speak freely, and it would be impossible for me to be here, speaking, if I was dead. However, it would be possible for me to live without freedom of speech. To put it bluntly, without life, my freedom of speech is useless. Being alive gives me the ability to exercise my right to live, and my right to speak freely. Its two rights for the price of one! Clearly a better deal!

The question is simple but inane, and implies losing the right to speech cannot be life-threatening. Then once conditions progress and the right to life is directly under attack, there is "no one allowed to speak for you".

It doesn't imply that at all.

History shows us it does. The people who used to run the ACLU were very well aware of that.

> What's a more fundamental right, life, or speech?

Could you help me understand how "history shows us" that this question implies that the loss of free speech can't be a threat to life?

Sure. Nobody dared speak up against the Holocaust. (Those that did were sent to a labor camp or had their heads sliced off.) Lack of free speech meant the Nazis could (and did) kill anyone for any reason with complete impunity. There was no right to life under Hitler.

The first thing dictators do is remove free speech. This is what enables removing all the other rights at the dictator's whim, because then nobody can speak out against it. Nobody can even inform others about it. This is why totalitarian regimes so aggressively suppress free speech.

The Soviet Union collapsed soon after Gorbachev stopped repressing free speech (glasnost and peristroika). This is not a coincidence.

Still not sure how the question implied that the loss of the right to free speech can't threaten life.