Questions about the early strip and Sapphire Guard

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Nope. There is zero evidence that Azure City works that way. You are extrapolating far too much from a throwaway line from the lawyer. Your extremely narrow and specific interpretation of that line is not the only valid reading of it.

Yes, of course I am interpreting in a single way. I am not somehow forcing you to believe the exact same thing. What I am saying is that you cannot take the statement "Azure City doesn't have freedom of Speech" and from there conclude "Azure City does have Freedom of Speech, in some way". What assumptions you make that don't contradict the text are for you to decide.

However, the statement you quoted had nothing to do with Azure city and everything to do with what it actually means for a place to not have Freedom of Speech, and nothing you say here or below in any way invalidates what I said about the lack of it. I am therefore assuming that you quoted just that bit but are addressing my full position in the rest of the post below.

Once again: Freedom of speech is not a binary concept. The fact that an absolute, unrestricted constitutional right to freedom of speech does not appear to exist does not mean that the government claims the power to arrest anyone for saying anything.

Yes, so? Of course societies with some Freedom of Speech don't ever have absolute Freedom of Speech. But if I we take the canon position that there is no Freedom of Speech in Azure City, then the most simple and parsimonious conclusion is that there is no Freedom of Speech - i.e. every citizen is subject to censorship. Freedom of Speech exists in a continuum, I agree - I just have no problem is accepting that Azure City is at 0.

Again: you seem to agree that, absent any other laws, what I said is perfectly correct - you just feel the need to assume that there are indeed laws in Azure City, that somehow protect the citizens' ability to speak their minds, without actually falling under the statement "there is Freedom of Speech" (which, again, we know there is not). I do not assume that - for reasons I will get into - but as long as you ultimate conclusion is "Azure City doesn't have Freedom of Speech and yet it is a Good city", then I have no contention with that, although I find this whole line of thought rather self-contradictory from a logical perspective.

In fact, if it did, then that would present peculiar problems. In a scene that, unlike the above example, actually focuses on who the state can and cannot arrest, Hinjo specifically says that while he would love to arrest Kubota, the only surviving Azure City magistrate claims there is not enough evidence against Kubota to warrant a trial, despite the fact that Kubota is completely comfortable speaking critically to Hinjo's fact. So no, even the Lord of the City can't arrest Kubota for saying just anything - such as by questioning his right to appoint new nobles, which Kubota had just done.

Yes, that would be because Azure City is not a Constitutional Republic, but a Feudal Monarchy in which Feudal Lords are not subject to any actual city laws, but instead are subject only to Privilege ("Private Law") and thus what applies to them does not apply to the lawyers, or foreigners or even everyday citizens.

In essence, it is the very fact that the city is feudal in nature that forms the basis of my acceptance of the idea that there is no freedom of speech in Azure City, because I do not know of any Feudal Society that had Freedom of Speech, and enough that did not but were otherwise decent places to be in (for the standards of the time) that I have no problem imagining Azure City to be one such place.

But there's no evidence that speech is particularly restricted in the realm.

Yes there is: the lawyers said as much.

Also, just think about it. Your reading of the lawyer's statement amounts to him basically saying "Just because this country is Lawful Good doesn't mean it doesn't claim the right to arrest anyone for saying anything, no matter what it is." That statement is, to say the least, bizarre. To say the most, it's definitely not what Lawful Good governments tend to do. LG governments, to the extent that they differ from other governments, focus on consistency and predictability in the legal system, and try not to make citizens live in fear of what the government might do next. If anyone can be seized for any reason, that's essentially the opposite of consistency, predictability, and, um, non-living in fear.

Lacking Freedom of Speech makes it very predictable that speaking your mind can get you arrested, just like taking someone else's property can get you arrested. Does the lack of it add a burden of fear to the population? Yes, but not enough to flip a city from "a Good place to live" to "an Evil place to live", IMnpHO. Many other fears that can grip a population - such as fear of invasion or fear of starvation that also need to also be taken into consideration.

I repeat: if you want to believe that freedom of Speech is the one freedom required for a society to be good, then this conversation is over, because it is a position I don't share, and one I don't think is defensible. A society is good if the people are happy to live in it. Azure City, until the invasion, seemed to have little poverty, healthy citizens and defences from raiding. It did not exploit its population and, for the last generation of rulers, ensured that the feudal lords did not themselves overly exploit their rights by, in this particular case, ensuring they were constantly more concerned with one another than with the exploitation of their subjects.

Now, if you look at that description and think to yourself "sure, but the citizens weren't legally allowed to speak their minds in public, therefore the whole place was not better than post-invasion Gobbotopia" (as some have done above), then yes, I can see how you cannot reconcile "Azure City has no Freedom of Speech" with "The City is Good". But also again: I disagree, and I'm not particularly interested in listening to why you think otherwise, except insofar as such assumption makes the comic wrong, and therefore should be switched to one that does not (such as my assumption that "Freedom of Speech is not the one freedom required for a city to be Good").

As to why Azure City doesn't have Freedom of Speech, I thought that was obvious: Shojo was Chaotic Good. He did not trust laws, or constitutions, or anything similarly Lawful. He believed in judging situations on a case-by-case basis, which means that under his rule, he would have had no reason to implement a Freedom of Speech law, or any other constitutional protection that would subject him to the law. He invested his energy into ensuring a prosperous, safe, healthy city for as many citizens as he could. But the bottom line is that that doesn't translate into having Freedom of Speech. And if what worries you is the uncertainty of not having it written in stone, then no Chaotic-run city will ever be Good enough for you - but that's on you.

Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?

Grey Wolf

[brian 333]

The Grey Wolf is right. Free Speech is a continuum from none to unlimited, but by itself cannot define a Good society. The much touted, "Yelling FIRE in a crowded building," is an example of a constraint on free speech which is Good in both intent and result.

A Good society also exists on a continuum in which freedom of speech is but one data point. "Are babies in danger of being eaten," is also a data point. A society which allows unrestricted speech but also has baby-eating can't be good either, and so we see that freedom of speech is less important than baby-eating as a data point on the Good Society continuum, because some speech can be restricted while remaining Good, but even allowing one baby to be eaten shoves that society straight into the Evil row of the alignment graph.

Freedom of Speech is not inherently Good or Evil. It is an example of Chaos, in which the individual is deemed more important than the collective. A Lawful society could reject the idea that it has any importance whatsoever. A LG society might tolerate free speech within the law, a LN one might prescribe Lawful speech, while a LE society could punish speech which does not conform to the dictator's desires.

Only societies which value individuality concern themselves with freedoms of any kind.

[Lacuna Caster]

Girls, please, you're both pretty. And incisive.

I think one can conclude that there is at least an interesting and non-obvious story to be extracted for azure city's legal policies on this front. But I don't the actual evidence is going to point you very far in either direction.