For the same reason (virtually?) all absolutism is: it backs itself into a corner from which there is no escape. It discards any pragmatism or nuance.
What I'm evolving toward is a sense of interrelated, and often opposing, rights and obligations around communications.
Free expression, a right to truth, privacy in general, though some obligation for disclosure in public interest or concern, freedoms of and from association or expression, among others.
The benefit to this is that it gives a unified scope for looking at what have been a set of distinct and discrete rights. The disadvantage is that there's no simple or clear guidance, only trade-offs. Though (another benefit) at least those trade-offs are made clear, explicit, and the relationships are established.
I've found a few others thinking along similar lines, with some work out of the Berkman Klein Center (at Harvard) and UC Berkeley, the latter specifically addressing a right to the truth. I can dig up specific names if requested.
Just by saying “absolutism is bad” your post doesn’t explain why you are against free speech. The problem with anything but a simple rule for free speech (with obvious exceptions for threats, malicious lies, danger etc) is that it becomes a litigation, which is often a power struggle about who can manipulate the rules best, or a political struggle where one group captures the means of adjudicating speech.
The very earliest advocates for free speech, most notably Milton, excluded established powers from its protections, notably the Catholic Church:
I mean not tolerated popery, and open superstition, which, as it extirpates all religions and civil supremacies, so itself should be extirpate, provided first that all charitable and compassionate means be used to win and regain the weak and the misled.
For the same reason (virtually?) all absolutism is: it backs itself into a corner from which there is no escape. It discards any pragmatism or nuance.
What I'm evolving toward is a sense of interrelated, and often opposing, rights and obligations around communications.
Free expression, a right to truth, privacy in general, though some obligation for disclosure in public interest or concern, freedoms of and from association or expression, among others.
The benefit to this is that it gives a unified scope for looking at what have been a set of distinct and discrete rights. The disadvantage is that there's no simple or clear guidance, only trade-offs. Though (another benefit) at least those trade-offs are made clear, explicit, and the relationships are established.
I've found a few others thinking along similar lines, with some work out of the Berkman Klein Center (at Harvard) and UC Berkeley, the latter specifically addressing a right to the truth. I can dig up specific names if requested.
Just by saying “absolutism is bad” your post doesn’t explain why you are against free speech. The problem with anything but a simple rule for free speech (with obvious exceptions for threats, malicious lies, danger etc) is that it becomes a litigation, which is often a power struggle about who can manipulate the rules best, or a political struggle where one group captures the means of adjudicating speech.
But it is a power struggle and always has been.
The very earliest advocates for free speech, most notably Milton, excluded established powers from its protections, notably the Catholic Church:
I mean not tolerated popery, and open superstition, which, as it extirpates all religions and civil supremacies, so itself should be extirpate, provided first that all charitable and compassionate means be used to win and regain the weak and the misled.
-- John Milton, Areopagitica, 1644.