Quote:
Originally Posted by John Wilkes Booth
democracy flourished in athens for a very short time... as for guaranteed free speech for the populous i'm really not sure that they ever made a point of it. maybe you know more about it than i do but i've never heard that. i'd like some historical sources if you have them.
like the roman republic for instance... saying the wrong thing there could get you killed from what i've read. yea rich landowners had some right to voice their opinion in that establishment sure. but that's not really on the level of what i'm talking about. i mean i'm sure the idea of free speech goes way back but i'm talking about putting it to practice. even the united states didn't respect free speech during the first world war. people talked about it for a long time before we ever really saw any results.
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America is pretty much identical to the Roman Republic. The rich get richer, and if you upset them they can very easily make you disappear. I'm not saying that justice is for hire, but the rich and powerful definitely have enough pull to get away with most anything they want. But people in Ancient Rome
were technically protected by the law to be able to say what they wanted to say, except in cases of treason (which is still something you can be accused of in America, though it isn't often) and slander/libel.
As for sources, this is a good article that goes into the history of "Freedom of Speech" in different countries:
2. Free speech in history |
Greco-Roman freedoms were by no means perfect and always protected, but the ideal was there.