[thephyber]

"The Flying Spaghetti Monster exists and is the only true god. The evidence exists but you have to already be an expert to understand it and it would take too long to explain it to you." This a tactic to shut down the discussion, not advance it.

Any time someone invokes "human rights" or "natural rights", it's worth at least referencing a common basis of facts written somewhere. Without this, such discussion is likely to follow two diverging paths and the people discussing it likely aren't talking about the same concepts. The relevant Human Rights document is usually the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights[1] and Free Speech/Expression is Article 19.

Some people sat down and decided the list of things that are "human rights". Lots of other people object to some of the items on that list, so it's not exactly infallible.

North Korea is a good example of a place with the lack of 1A protected speech from government interference, but it also has lots of other "human rights" violations, so you aren't really clarifying the problem with free speech by using it as an example. North Korea frequently violates most of the 30 UN declared human rights articles, so the connotation of using that country as an example leads to conflation of other issues.

Everything that creates or improves "personal feelings" isn't a human right, so that doesn't help the discussion much either.

[1] https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-huma...

[tekknik]

You just said a whole lot of nothing trying to demand people subscribe to the ideas of human rights of a particular country. Human rights are universal, by definition.

[thephyber]

But they aren't universal in the sense that all people and governments agree on the list and definitions.

In particular to the Freedom of Speech discussion, the most important part is the list of exemptions. Even China would argue they give their people Freedom of Speech, but they have more restrictions/exemptions than other countries. Hence, they are not universal in a practical sense and the details must be discussed.