A Quote by Orhan Pamuk

For me, Westernization is not about consuming fanciful goods; it's about a system of free speech, democracy, egalitarianism and respect for the people's rights and dignity.
Let's not use the term democracy as a play on words which is what people commonly do, using human rights as a pretext. Those people that really violate human rights [the West] violate human rights from all perspectives. Typically on the subject of human rights regarding the nations from the south and Cuba they say, "They are not democratic societies, they do not respect human rights, and they do not respect freedom of speech".
For us democracy is a question of human dignity. And human dignity is political freedom, the right to freely express opinion and the right to be allowed to criticise and form opinions. Human dignity is the right to health, work, education and social welfare. Human dignity is the right and the practical possibility to shape the future with others. These rights, the rights of democracy, are not reserved for a select group within society, they are the rights of all the people.
It's always easy to get people to condemn threats to free speech when the speech being threatened is speech that they like. It's much more difficult to induce support for free speech rights when the speech being punished is speech they find repellent.
At the end of the day, these are issues that need to be discussed: femicides, among other things - immigrant rights, women's' rights, indigenous people's rights, animal rights, Mother Earth's rights. If we don't talk about these topics, then we have no place in democracy. It won't exist. Democracy isn't just voting; it's relegating your rights.
We need to respect free speech, but we need to respect one another's rights to free speech, too.
Democratization is not democracy; it is a slogan for the temporary liberalization handed down from an autocrat. Glasnost is not free speech; only free speech, constitutionally guaranteed, is free speech.
Though editorialists at The New York Times and The Washington Post still don't get it, most Democrats in Congress finally do: Today's trade disputes are no longer mostly about tariffs, quotas, or free entry of goods. They are about the ground rules for capitalism. Are there to be only property rights? What about the other rights that liberal democracies have fought for since the 1880s?
In terms of political contributions, the free speech rights of corporations I don't think deserve the same protections as the free speech rights of real living, breathing, voting humans.
In terms of political contributions, the free speech rights of corporations I dont think deserve the same protections as the free speech rights of real living, breathing, voting humans.
The US constitution's First Amendment rights only cover Americans, but I believe that in a democracy the competition of ideas and free speech should combat beliefs that it does not agree with - more speech and debate, not censorship.
Most of my columns at National Review focus on PC culture, and sometimes, when I write about some idiotic, anti-free-speech idea presented by some idiotic, anti-free-speech student or professor, people will ask me why I wasted my time writing about it.
I hope what we can talk about is something that happened, you know, within the last 25 years, the things that are relevant to our country right here, right now, including all people, fighting for the rights of working people, fighting for the rights of people struggling for dignity and respect in our society.
Remember that free speech is about the government can't infringe on your free-speech right. It says nothing about an employer - and what they can do to your free speech right. You've got the right to say it. But if you're working for somebody, they have the right to do whatever they want as well.
Every institution has its own dignity, and if people don't respect the dignity of those institutions, it affects the whole system.
The alt-right is working hard to cloak its desire to create chaos in the streets as free speech. They say they want to air their views, but it's about provoking violent reactions. We all can easily see that this is not about free speech.
Listing rights generally involves enumerating things you may do without interference (the right to free speech) or may not be done to you without your permission (illegal search and seizure, loud boy-band music in public places). They are protections, not gifts of material goods. Material goods and services must be taken from others, or provided by their labor, so if you believe you have an absolute right to them, and others don't choose to provide it to you, you then have a 'right' to steal from them. But what about their far more fundamental right not to be robbed?
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