Rule 1: Freedom of Speech and Press

Here is the Freedom of Speech section from the proposed constitution. There are 179 similar sections for other topics.

1/ The right to examine and communicate freely about our policies, our leaders, our and our world has always been the most important factor in helping to guarantee every other right. Therefore, freedom of speech and its main objective, knowledge of the truth shall be the first and foremost priority of our informed democracy.

2/ Government shall make no laws restricting the free speech or writings of human citizens. Government shall make no laws restricting free information exchange.Government shall do nothing that hampers or discourages public discourse, and Government shall in fact be required to move in the opposite direction and encourage public discourse where practical.

3/ The right of human citizens to communicate with one another freely, safely and anonymously shall be the supreme right, the right above all other rights, the right that can never be infringed-upon to preserve any other right, public or private. Come terrible events as they may, we shall never compromise the right of our human citizens to discuss and figure-out what the truth is in safety, privacy, and anonymity if they wish.

4/ The rights of fictional citizens and foreigners shall be lower and less than human citizens in matters of free speech and participation in the public discussions of the people. Fictional citizens include: corporations, partnerships, labor unions, political parties, religions, charities, colleges and all other associations of men. Fictional citizens shall have the right to have, utter, and express whatever opinions they wish. However, their oversized money flows, and credibility shall not be directed by their managers to shape, influence, or drown-out the natural voice of our human citizens. No fictional citizen or foreigner shall expend money to sponsor, advertise, tout, broadcast, publish or promulgate messages that have anything to do with politics, the economy, the legal system, the business environment, the natural environment, energy policy, drug use, social norms, sexual norms, body aesthetics, consumerism, or reproductive norms.

5/ No fictional citizen or foreigner shall directly or indirectly lobby or participate in government decisions. No fictional citizen shall give money to lobbyists, political parties, charities, or other straw men doing these things.

6/ Fictional citizens and foreigners shall not have the right to monopolize, cartelize or dominate the free press. Government shall limit the size, reach, and output quantity of all individual media organizations in this nation so they are more human scale. This is to keep media organizations from gaining oversized cred and using it to lord over the people.

7/ Our nation calls itself isocratic in that all of its leaders at each level are supposed to have equal power. In our isocracy, no leader is supposed to rise above the other leaders as a prince or princeps in the minds of the people. For this reason, we shall intentionally allow a headwind for the mighty and say that no cases of slander, libel or defamation shall be allowed except those related to the off-limits topics discussed in this Rule 1.

8/ Government and the nation’s courts shall not punish any real human, in any way for the opinions, criticisms, or insults (but not the threats) they express about their own government, any foreign government, any fictional citizen, any leader, or rich person. In our nation, real humans shall have absolute and totally unlimited free speech in these matters. The only exception being that nobody is allowed to threaten violence, call for extra-judicial action, or speak publicly about the family, coupling, sexual, and dating matters of other people. Also, when speakers drive their audience towards violence, the only way to punishment them is in criminal court. Money court shall be prohibited from trying all matters even remotely related to free speech, slander, defamation, etc.

9/ Foreigners, and fictional citizens including especially political parties, may be forced to suffer such limitations on their freedom of speech, as the Senate finds beneficial, convenient and expeditious to elect.

10/ Government and the nation’s fictional citizens shall be required to call all men as equal, but the individual citizens of our nation shall not be required to do this. Our all-important, first-and-foremost right to free speech shall be considered more important by a wide measure. Therefore, individual citizens saying their own piece shall be free say things that most people find to be totally sexist and racist. This is just like how they are free to campaign for communism, or fascism, or say that the world is flat, or that the great flood was from 40 days of rain and not a giant epochal-lyse of a tsunami.

11/ Our first and foremost right to free speech shall never be compromised on account of people’s personal feelings or their sense of personal, religious, or ethnic pride. These things shall be considered completely inconsequential in comparison to any erosion of our all-important, first-and-foremost right to free speech.

12/ Government shall not restrict hate speech from individual citizens, except when it threatens or calls-for violent extra-judicial violence. Human citizens shall have the total freedom to criticize, demean, degrade, insult, and say hateful and untrue things to and about one another. The people shall also have the absolute right to make ugly faces at one another. However, they shall not have the right to threaten, or to call-for extra-judicial violence. They shall also not have the right to touch in any way at all, or violate near personal space, or make threatening gestures, or threatening movements at one another.

13/ If this nation finds itself in a declared war with any nation, there shall be no prohibition on hate speech against the people of that nation. For the purposes of this paragraph, the war may also be an an un-declared war of terrorism.

14/ The government and economy of our nation exists for its flesh and blood citizens, not fictional citizens, not foreigners, and not recent immigrants. These shall all suffer restrictions on their right of free speech so that they don’t drown-out, or shift the organic voice of the people in niche issues like immigration.

15/ Government may limit the voice of the wealthiest one per-mil with respect to paid and sponsored messages, so they can’t use their wealth to drown-out the organic voice of the people in our democracy.

16/ The right of free speech shall not apply to the family, coupling, sexual, dating, and medical records of the people and especially their leaders. These personal topics are off limits for all news outlets and all social media platforms unless there is a conviction. News people that report on allegations regarding personal topics may be stigmatized and charged with invasion of privacy for profit.

17/ Free speech does not include the right to ambush people, or follow people around recording them like paparazzi, private investigators, or journalists do. These may be charged with invasion of privacy for profit.

18/ The right to free speech shall not necessarily apply to paid advertising and sponsored messages, especially when these are misleading. Government shall have the right to fine those involved in the paid promotion of untrue, misleading, or inaccurate messages for political agenda or profit.

19/ Paid messages shall not be allowed to inculcate. Advertisers may only display once per quarter-year per viewer.

20/ Freedom of speech rights shall not apply to media intended for minors under age 18. All commercial media intended for minors under age 18 shall be pre-approved by the Senate. All children’s media must be in some way educational, and the most exciting must be the most educational.

21/ No Senator, active or retired shall ever be compelled to reveal his information sources, and all shall be duty-bound to protect the identity of their sources, when their sources request. Un-elected journalists may be compelled by the nation’s courts to reveal their sources.

22/ Government shall not prevent, hinder or delay the public dissemination or viewing of any political, economic, scientific, or public safety messages through any medium, except in relation to a stated and credible defense or terrorism issue.

23/ Those who speak to a large audience and call for violence may be stigmatized as militants by the Sub-Senate.

24/ The Senate may deport non-citizens, and immigrant- citizens for what they say, and the beliefs they are spoused to.

25/ With a 60% overmajority, the Sub-Senate may strip any work of its copyright protection, or preface any work or message.

26/ Robots, automatons and computer programs shall not have the right to free speech. Government shall carefully regulate when and how robots are allowed to initiate contact with humans. Robots and other machines shall not have the right to initiate contact with humans, or the right to speak loudly or to flash their lights or wave their appendages and call attention to themselves in public. Robots shall not use voices that sound human.

27/ When the people gather to hear their leaders speak, the right of free speech applies to the leaders who have drawn the crowd. It does not apply to hecklers, claqueurs, and loud counter-protesters. These may be charged with contempt of the free speech rights of a leader while he is speaking to the people gathered to hear him. Anyone who commits this free speech crime with intent or shared plan may be required to spend several years in a work camp.

28/ Speakers shall always have broad rights to expel interrupters from their event by saying the words, “Get out, I hereby expel you from my audience”, and describing the expelled people clearly. Thereupon, the expelled people must immediately stop talking and making noise, and immediately and quietly walk out of the venue. If the expelled people fail to immediately stop making noise and leave, they can be charged with contempt of free speech. There shall be double penalties for those who don’t start leaving until the arrival of an usher. There shall be triple penalties for those who will not walk out of the venue.

29/ Unaccompanied candidate signs shall be prohibited on the ground that they are a way for money to influence elections. This includes yard signs, writing on vehicles, murals, and billboards.

30/ The right to make money on media is a secondary aspect of free speech. This secondary right should never detract in any way from the primary right of free speech, that of exchanging information. Therefore, the right to make money on media does not include the right to remove a work from circulation for any reason. Also, work removed from circulation by the copyright owners generally voids the copyright.

31/ Censorship may be considered the felony of democide. Fictional citizens that engage in censorship may be closed down, or if they are a for-profit entity, then their shareholder equity may be cancelled either in part or in whole. The directors and even the censorship minions may also be imprisoned for engaging in censorship. Following employer orders shall be no excuse with censorship. We say this because we want our fictional citizens to stay far away from the line here with regard to censorship.

32/ Any action taken to punish people for expressing a political or group idea may be considered censorship and thus an act of democide. This includes doxing, going to a person’s home, yelling at them in the street, and spreading stories and rumors about them.

33/ All airports, train stations, bus stations, shopping mall common areas, office mall common areas, multi-restaurant common areas, public building common areas, private property open to the public, and school campuses for people who are generally over age 18 shall permit all free speech that is non-commercial and non-religious. It shall be the crime of censorship when the management or guards of these public forum locations interfere with the free exchange of information.

34/ Employers shall not be free to discriminate against their Employees for what they say in their free time, or in their personal communications. To allow this sort of discrimination is to undermine our first and foremost right to free speech.

35/ No fictional citizen, employer, school, charity, religion, club, transport carrier, political party, or other association of man shall be allowed to punish or discriminate against their members/ workers/ associates for any free-time, off-duty, or away from campus political speech that government cannot punish a person for.

36/ Workers shall generally not be free to add their own sexual, economic, or political messages to their work conversations or attire while at or around their workplace. Workers shall generally not be permitted to divert customers and co-workers to competitors, or to their own personally profitable ends.

37/ It is quite important that we eliminate all the downside of Senate service. And one of the big downsides is other people saying negative things about you because you are their election opponent. So we will say this: If any Senate candidate is talking about the other candidate(s) each of us should consider them disqualified on that fact alone. And while this is an official policy, it is not enforced by government, but by each citizen. We do this because we don’t in any way want this in our elections because of how forcefully it drives good people away from democratic service.