Free speech?

It's occurring to me that the internet is really giving us the illusion of free speech.

Take this blog, for example: there are means whereby "the community" can deem it unsuitable, and my voice is taken away from me.

Look at talkboards, like The Guardian's "Guardian unlimited" board, and its "comment is free" section, where the public can post comments on articles published by journalists. Say the wrong thing on either of these boards, and you get banned.

So how is this freedom of speech? How is it freedom of speech when what you say has to be something that someone else decides is OK?

If I'm an individual human being, and I have "rights" to free speech, how is it that another individual has the power to take my voice away from me?

This is an issue that's pissed me off of late, and it's a topic I think I'll carry on with here - at least until "the powers that be" deem even this blog offensive.

Funny thing, though, the business of giving and taking offence. Because it seems to me that to take offence you have to have pretty low self esteem in the first place. And to desire to give offence, likewise.

But I shall (perhaps) carry on with this later. This subject brings up many interesting paths. I'm not sure which ones I want to pursue.

It's odd, but at the end of the day it's really the number of people you reach when you're talking that's more important than what you say. I mean, that's what sells papers, isn't it? Hit the right note at the right time, regardless of what you say, and you're a hit. Talk a great deal of sense and be heard by nobody and you're a failure.

Fascinating stuff. I wonder how many great leaders and orators just got passed by over the millenia.

Shows what an illusion everything is. There are no great people. Just people who were anti-victims. Poeple who were the recipients of circumstance, or involved in lucky accidents.

And it's all just the butterfly effect once more.