This still needs some work, but I’m wondering if i should add the entrapment problem to the essay
The Public Sidewalk: Enemy to Freedoms of Speech
Americans have been duped for years into thinking that by right of possessing vocal chords they may hence disgorge whatever ramblings they have in succession of their mind via the comforts of their constitutional rights. It is the purpose of this article to show how the citizens are wrong in their conclusion and how this perversion is an enemy of liberty.
Property Rights and Funereal Protesting
Rev. Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church have been picketing their memorandum of god-hate for nearly 20 years. If you are yet to witness the distasteful hatred of anti-gay protesters waving signs outside the funerals of dead soldiers, signs of the likes of “God hates fags” and “Thank God for dead soldiers”, then I invite you to watch this short clip of Hannity & Colmes. The revulsion from such clips is immense, but the question of causality is straightforward. The great giant of liberty, Murray N. Rothbard wrote that there can be no crime against one’s image or reputation, only one’s property.
“…someone’s ‘reputation’ is not and cannot be ‘owned’ by him, since it is purely a function of the subjective feelings and attitudes held by other people. But since no one can ever truly ‘own’ the mind and attitude of another, this means that no one can literally have a property right in his ‘reputation.’ A person’s reputation fluctuates all the time, in accordance with the attitudes and opinions of the rest of the population.” (For a New Liberty, chapter 6, page 117)
Therefore, the sheer act of protest is free from liability as long as the protesters have legal admittance to the property from which they protest. Here is where the perversion of sidewalk communalism takes up position.
By way of common ownership individuals cannot be barred from any specific location unless they are in direct violation of some municipality’s accord. Thus, anyone may travel along the sidewalks outside of businesses, homes, churches, etc demanding that their voice be heard in the name of free speech. Even unsympathetic listeners will reframe from qualms against these protesters since they too support this “supposed” freedom.
Yet, surely freedom of speech cannot take place from any position one chooses. Surely someone cannot stand in my kitchen or my living room and protest what I eat or watch on my television and if they did, they would be violating my rights of ownership and held responsible for trespassing. No sane individual would argue against this since no sane individual would argue against the right of property owners to make such decisions.
Why are sidewalks so different from other pieces of property?
Why not privatize sidewalks to individuals who would rent you, and others, the right to use them as well as provide them the right to remove individuals whom they deem annoying[1]?
Therefore, the situation is not one of freedom of speech versus defamation of character, or freedom of speech versus reverence for ones country; it is not concerning freedom of speech at all, since freedom of speech presupposes a platform from which to speak. It is about property! Who owns the property from which the protesters shout? If the answer to this question is uncertain or bleak, then you have located your problem.
Therefore, let us reexamine this scenario under the lens of property rights. If anti-gay activists wish to celebrate the deaths of gay soldiers or police officers then they must first purchase the right to do so. They must either rent or buy the space from which they wish to shout (if not, then they are trespassing). Furthermore, family members of dead gays would have the option of choosing funeral homes that contract with the family to not allow anti-gay protests (which may presumably cost more), or to contract to allow such protests at a discounted price (which would presumably cost less). Thus, the anti-gay protestors must be willing to subsidize the funerals of gays in order to wave their signs.
Property Rights and the Paparazzi
Finally, we all love the entertaining photos that rest within the grocery checkout lanes. The images of overweight/underweight Hollywood stars covering their faces as a myriad of pesky photojournalists shout obscenities and snap pictures. We love these images, but sometimes we sympathize for the stars. “Just leave him/her alone!” we bellow.
Yet, what is it that prevents them from avoiding such harassment? Or, better yet, is it harassment?
As we have alluded to above, one cannot own his image or reputation, nor can he own an actual image, a photograph, of himself. Like the mental construction of memory which is a product of one’s eyes and mind, a picture is a product of one’s camera. The question of ownership begins first with the individual, then proceeds to his labor, then the equipment via exchange, and finally to the property from which that equipment is employed. If you don’t want to be photographed, then you must remain where you are veiled from the public. You do not own the rights of another’s’ flashing camera the same way you don’t own the right to another’s gazing eyes. You may only own, or rent, the space from which they snap their pictures
Therefore, what celebrities really need is private roads and private sidewalks from which they may oust those that take pictures. They want more privatization so that they may enjoy their privacy. If not, then their privacy is not something they truly desire.
[1] Most kneejerk reactions will involve something allong the lines of “what if you are entraped”
but in my mind there is a difference between communual use and communual ownership.