[ineedasername]

That's a nice sound bite that doesn't actually respond to what I said. It's the sort of thing a politician would say, and as with most such things it avoids difficult topics in favor of easy simplifications.

Because by implication, you're saying there should be no laws, since every law is a condition on freedom in some way. Is that your position on things?

As for dictators and the like: they adopt the words of civil society and spin it into propaganda. All you've pointed out it that bad people do bad things and lie about them, claiming they were good. You haven't addressed the problem of making sure my freedom isn't taken away when someone else acts on what they believe is their freedom.

So, do you think there should be any laws at all? If not, I'm not sure we can have a reasonable conversation here. If so, I'm happy to discuss further, as long as it's not in sound bites and cliches.

[baybal2]

Would you freedom be harmed from somebody's public gathering? How in the world?

I think you are doing philosophy here.

[ineedasername]

I was responding to your blanket statement-- that is what got us here. You're still avoiding the hard question about all laws being conditions on freedom.

As for public gatherings? Sure: they can interfere with my freedom to go about my life. They might prevent me from leaving my home. They might cause dangerous situations. A reasonable level of oversight helps to minimize that sort of thing. Lisbon went well beyond that, I think we would agree.

So: laws or no laws?

Edit: From my interpretation of your tone, I doubt we're actually very far apart on the issue. Permits for this sort of planned thing should be easy to get and extremely hard to turn down. Spontaneous demonstrations should be given very wide latitude to allow them even without prior approval, with local authority only intervening to make sure things stay safe. Demonstrators themselves should be held to a high level of accountability for their actions if things turn bad, but local authorities should be held to an extremely high standard of accountability if they interfere inappropriately.

But there are the difficult questions: keeping things safe, inappropriate interference... these are places where lines have to be drawn. They are gray areas. They take human judgement because one-size-fits-all policies don't actually fit all. This is a fundamental problem for civil society because people differ in their beliefs on where to draw the line. And people are fallible, they can make mistakes in judgement. People are also corruptible, or come with their own biases. It makes things difficult and messy, but that is the hard work that it takes to give people as much freedom as possible without sacrificing one person's freedom for someone else's. Even then there must be compromises: I think it's a very reasonable restriction on my freedom of movement to have to wait in traffic for a while because other people are exercising their freedom to assemble and protest etc.

My observation is that uou can tell the countries that embrace freedom from those that are tyrannies by whether or not they struggle with these questions vs. having one imposed on them without any recourse save revolution.

But it's still a matter of degree. England is much more free than China, but compared to the US its freedom of expression is much more limited by libel laws. While in the US, privacy-related freedom is much more limited compared to the EU with GDPR (even as flawed as that still is).

[baybal2]

> But there are the difficult questions: keeping things safe, inappropriate interference... these are places where lines have to be drawn. They are gray areas. They take human judgement because one-size-fits-all policies don't actually fit all. This is a fundamental problem for civil society because people differ in their beliefs on where to draw the line. And people are fallible, they can make mistakes in judgement. People are also corruptible, or come with their own biases. It makes things difficult and messy, but that is the hard work that it takes to give people as much freedom as possible without sacrificing one person's freedom for someone else's. Even then there must be compromises: I think it's a very reasonable restriction on my freedom of movement to have to wait in traffic for a while because other people are exercising their freedom to assemble and protest etc.

We are different because things are very clear to me. Crystal clear. There are nothing "grey lines" there.

Keeping freedom of assembly behind so hoops to jump on a pretext "It's not me who is prohibiting this! Rules do! I'm doing it for your safety!" is very convenient for every bad government around. Otherwise it's entirely pointless.

1. Lots of angry people don't need any freedom of assembly to whack anybody good.

2. Everybody else will not do that anyway.

3. Whacking somebody good, is an act of assault, you either have a riot, civil war, or already a revolution.

[ineedasername]

You are ignoring my answer about how gatherings or protests can impact my own freedom. Any freedom has that potential. I listed some, but here are more:

What if I want to hold a gathering in the same place at the same time? Which gathering gets the space? Why should my freedom to assemble be limited because of your freedom to assemble? That's an issue that getting a permit resolves: simple scheduling of resources.

Maybe the protest is against a business I work for: What about my freedom to go to work without people shouting at me about how awful I am for working there?

Maybe the protest causes extra traffic at a busy time of day. I have a heart attack and die because the extra traffic meant the ambulance couldn't get there on time. My right to life was taken away because of the gathering, but it's an easy issue to resolve by with a permit process to ensure minimal disruptions.

What if the gathering is in the middle of the street because they're protesting building the road further through natural lands? My freedom of free movement is taken away.

I can go on and on about how something as seemingly simple as freedom of assembly has the potential to impact other people's freedom, because freedom is not as simple as you want it to be.

You insist things are black and white but when I point out a complexity, you ignore it except to repeat yourself in different ways. You have not provided any actual justification. You say that a freedom is not a freedom if there are preconditions but never answer the issue of how all laws are preconditions on freedom.

The questions I raise are not philosophical: you cannot rationally make any claims about freedom if you have not thought through these very basic issues. If you have not examined these questions then your opinions are built on air and emotion, not clear thinking and reason.

I'm done here though. Feel free to respond, but I won't reply only to have you repeat yourself and ignore anything that contradicts your wish for things to be black and white.