Free speech is a mixed blessing. Even the founding fathers (who patterned much of their thinking after Enlightenment thinkers) knew that they were opening a can of worms. But, better to have worms than have nothing at all. I think the spate of juvenile suicide we have seen of late shows just how dangerous words can become. Children get verbally bullied, on line and in person. They feels there is no one who can help them. These circumstances are sufficient to marginalize them, and, they commit suicide or take guns to school, with (or without) murderous intent. There is no question that we have a problem here. One that clearly needs solutions...

Yes speech can kill .the perfect example is a death penalty order from the government .the person who does the killing is called the executioner .he executes the order given by the state .all declared wars are started by speech your debate is mostly about non-state sanctioned death .all state sanctioned death begins with words

See also my other comment from the December, 2017 post. Words, and how we think about them, are powerful influences on everyone of us. I have completed an essay I call: On Luck, Chance, Absurdity and Carl Jung. Part of that piece is included here, consisting of conclusions I reached while writing the paper:

...How we form notions about chance, luck, synchronicity and the like, is a curiosity. While principles/features of mathematics give us a degree of confidence in predicting chance outcomes, there is no free lunch: probability is NEVER certainty.

Luck is a hollow term in any sense whatsoever; narrow, broad or neutral. It only represents how things might possibly be, not how they probably are, nor how they WILL be. This, arguably, places it in the same back-yard with Nagel's cryptic comment on belief. (The View From Nowhere, 1986)

Jung's postulation of synchronicity, though an approximation of that thing called fate, implies a likelihood unlike the latter: an underlying tenet of synchronicity is that it connotes a positive experience/outcome. It is supposed to teach us something. Fate is, more often than not, associated with a negative result. Both are (I think Jung would agree) dependent on contingency. And matters of contingency are not matters of luck...

When we consider the realm of superstition, the pivotal role of language in passing that along, generation to generation, and how luck and superstition mutually support one another, we see clearly how powerful words are. I also wrote about how some superstitions emerged from practical considerations: not walking under a ladder for example, to wit, someone working high up on a ladder might have something he could drop ,accidentally,---but, accident or no, one walking below would not want to be on the business end of the accident---for some sorts of superstition, there is no other impetus stronger than self-preservation. Be careful what you say, because you never know who may be listening.

Speaking cant hurt or offend. Words themselves are just ordered scribbles and dont really have any meaning at all. It's just our collectivist delusions that words have meanings. We all have to decide to agree that a word has meaning for there to be anything to it at all. All words in all languages are reified argumentum ad populum fallacies in addition to whatever other error of logic they might be typically used for.

It is the reader who does the hurting and offending, not the writer. It is the mind that sees, not the eye.

We've actually managed to use delusions to outsource the ownous for our own emotions, "you made me angry!" These are lies we're told from childhood and in this way we're taught our first lesson of having a lack of personal responsability and laying false blame.

There is a recognised right to free speech. There is no recognised right to be offended.

There is no forum, so far, herein for the question(s) I am about to frame. As tar as I now know. My perplexity is what has evolved as UP-TALK. It seems useless to me. Not like rock and roll. Nor, jazz.
No, up-talk is a distraction. Up-talkers are lazy. Too lazy to think before they speak. So, these indolent people phrase their remarks as questions, hoping hearers will take the bait and answer their questions for them. So they don,'t have to work so hard. Inasmuch as work requires effort and time, I contend that up-talkers are merely trying to get ahead of the game. Now, someone might argue that this is only mass/popular culture; linguistic nuance; or progress. Huh? A reasonable judge, in a rational court of law, would laugh such nonsense out of her court. I have seen it discounted on tv courts. And those are a fraud and a ruse---from the get-go. Here's the challenge: next time you are being up-talked, ask the speaker if his/ her remark is a question. If there is an um or a quizzical look, walk away. You do not owe them your time or attention.