The Original Position (Malik Speaking)
						MAIN PATH: Vera
					Vera		Dee

I want to go back to what Fred was saying about Rawls and his original position argument. I agree with Dee that we need some understanding of fundamental rights as a basis for our views on speech. Now, maybe we could imagine ourselves in Rawls' original position for a minute. Would we want others to be free to degrade us, assault us, and restrict our actions through the use of speech? I think not. I think this code is exactly the kind of thing that we might agree to if we didn't know whether we would be the ones degraded and assaulted.

I support the code for a lot of reasons that I'll get to shortly. Right now I just want to say that I think we can reconcile a code like this with a Rawlsean theory of fundamental rights and institutions.

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