Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was responding to your blanket statement-- that is what got us here. You're still avoiding the hard question about all laws being conditions on freedom. As for public gatherings? Sure: they can interfere with my freedom to go about my life. They might prevent me from leaving my home. They might cause dangerous situations. A reasonable level of oversight helps to minimize that sort of thing. Lisbon went well beyond…
> But there are the difficult questions: keeping things safe, inappropriate interference... these are places where lines have to be drawn. They are gray areas. They take human judgement because one-size-fits-all policies don't actually fit all. This is a fundamental problem for civil society because people differ in their beliefs on where to draw the line. And people are fallible, they can make mistakes in judgement.…
What if I want to hold a gathering in the same place at the same time? Which gathering gets the space? Why should my freedom to assemble be limited because of your freedom to assemble? That's an issue that getting a permit resolves: simple scheduling of resources.
Maybe the protest is against a business I work for: What about my freedom to go to work without people shouting at me about how awful I am for working there?
Maybe the protest causes extra traffic at a busy time of day. I have a heart attack and die because the extra traffic meant the ambulance couldn't get there on time. My right to life was taken away because of the gathering, but it's an easy issue to resolve by with a permit process to ensure minimal disruptions.
What if the gathering is in the middle of the street because they're protesting building the road further through natural lands? My freedom of free movement is taken away.
I can go on and on about how something as seemingly simple as freedom of assembly has the potential to impact other people's freedom, because freedom is not as simple as you want it to be.
You insist things are black and white but when I point out a complexity, you ignore it except to repeat yourself in different ways. You have not provided any actual justification. You say that a freedom is not a freedom if there are preconditions but never answer the issue of how all laws are preconditions on freedom.
The questions I raise are not philosophical: you cannot rationally make any claims about freedom if you have not thought through these very basic issues. If you have not examined these questions then your opinions are built on air and emotion, not clear thinking and reason.
I'm done here though. Feel free to respond, but I won't reply only to have you repeat yourself and ignore anything that contradicts your wish for things to be black and white.