Some societies have limits on these votes as a means to prevent the tyranny of the majority.

In the U.S. the Bill of Rights outlines specific rights that cannot be infringed, including the freedom of speech. Now, this amendment could technically be repealed but that is a very high bar since it’s considered a fundamental right by which the others are derived.

Edit: downvotes are fine but at least add to the discussion. I would be interested in hearing what parts you think I’m not interpreting correctly

I've come to conclude that the right to free speech is the most important right in the Constitution.

The reason is straightforward - without free speech, nobody would know if/when the government is abusing any of your other rights.

In Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky and Hermann argue that the American system of propaganda is more effective than the Soviet one, precisely because there is no commissar explicitly telling you what you can and can't say or any other kind of overt and explicit censorship, making people blind to the possibility that they could possibly be being manipulated.

Freedom of speech is a natural right that just so happens to be enshrined in the constitution. It's very disturbing to see how modern discourse ignores the existence of natural rights. I don't see how the 1st amendment is a tenable position anymore when the government is now actively censoring by proxy. https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/563547-hypocritical-...

Well, probably the first time these were flagrantly violated was with the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.

The problem is that you're not conceiving the boundaries of the system properly. It's best, when creating an authoritarian provision to remove liberty, to assume that the control of such an mechanism is under the control of a faction you're least aligned with. This is why the US is liberal before it's a democracy. It has meta code defining the boundaries of the democracy, and in the case of speech, asserts that the liberty to speak supersedes any democratic authority.

Obviously people looking for an expedient authoritarian mandate to limit speech within the boundaries of what they consider to be acceptable see the existence of free speech as the allowance of that which is outside their boundaries, but they don't actually understand the purpose. The purpose is a hedge against tyranny with a trade-off. People get to say horrible, stupid, counterproductive things, but your political enemies don't get to constrain your ability to express yourself.

I also don't understand why the rest of the world is so eager to see this right stripped in America...I would feel extremely claustrophobic if there was no place on earth in which free communication wasn't enshrined in law. Even if Europeans want to mandate their own speech, they still benefit from the hedge against tyranny by such a place as America existing.

> we live in societies and can vote

A vote is simply not the same thing as a choice.

How would you feel if 51% of the people voted to force you to become a Druid?

I think his point was that you don't always get to decide for yourself, and voting was an example. Whether it be a majority, a dictator, or a corporation, someone, to a degree, has the power to tell you what's right and wrong, what's real and not.

What a scary place to live.

I’d hate to live in a place where a joke can get you jailed.

Yeah it sounds like something the Nazis would do...

That includes most of the world