Free Speech II
I.
Imagine two cities. The two cities have the same laws, but there are some cultural differences.
In the first city, children are taught that it's best to always speak your mind. Everyone's voice is welcomed, and as long as you remain civil you won't be heckled, shouted down, or ostracized. Everyone shares a general assumption that speech is unlikely to cause much harm. Folks in this city are taught that if someone says something that bothers you, you can disagree, but you are expected to remain calm and civil.
In this city, the norm extends even into controversial topics. The inhabitants of this city think that it's better to let folks say what they think and then you can hash out any disagreements. Punishing someone for being honest about their opinion is thought to be counterproductive - it doesn't squash the opinion, it just causes the people who hold it to stew and become resentful.
The people of the city don't carry this to the absolute extreme. For instance, randomly shouting slurs at people will get you kicked out of most places. And direct insults are thought to be crossing a line; attacking ideas is acceptable, but attacking individual people is widely understood to be uncivil and is met with condemnation. But as long as you keep away from personal insults, most people assume they can say what they want and other folks will take it in stride, even when there is serious disagreement.
In the second city, children are taught from a young age that they need to watch how they speak. Many things are considered offensive, and saying something offensive is considered a big deal. In this city, most people believe that speech can cause a lot of harm.
In this city it is considered acceptable, encouraged even, to shout down someone you don't like. Heckling and ostracism are important tools for shutting down harmful speech. In fact, if you hear someone say something and don't shout them down, everyone assumes you endorse what they have to say.
This city still has freedom of speech as a legal principle. They don't have secret police to throw you in jail for saying the wrong thing. But if you say the wrong thing you can definitely expect to be yelled at, cut off socially, or even lose your job.
II.
Which of these cities seems like a more pleasant place to you?
The advantage of the first city is you aren't constantly having to watch what you say. You just need to remember some basic rules - be civil, no insults, no heckling, etc. You can say what you're thinking, and if others disagree, they'll just explain the ways in which they disagree. They won't usually hold a grudge against you or yell at you. It's normal in this city for people with very different opinions to be friends.
On the other hand, you're much more likely to hear something you find offensive. It's also a lot easier for people with offensive views to find each other. And it's easier to spread those offensive views in public spaces. It's also common in the first city for people to hide behind civility to express various bigotries. And if you find someone's words upsetting or triggering, you won't find much support. Everyone else is going to roll their eyes and call you a snowflake if you complain.
The big advantage of the second city is that you're unlikely to hear really offensive views. And if you do hear something offensive, most folks will be on your side and support you if you go off yelling at the perpetrator or want to break off social ties over it.
The biggest disadvantage of the second city is that you're constantly having to monitor your speech to make sure you're not bothering anyone. You also don't know where people stand on things - people with odious views learn quickly to keep that to themselves. Many topics are never discussed in public, though conversations may still happen in small groups behind closed doors.
Another issue in the second city is that it's tricky to change the window of acceptable discourse. If everyone agrees an opinion is offensive, it's very difficult to even talk about that opinion at all. If public opinion is wrong on some controversial topic, it's really tough to fix it without getting a ton of blowback.
I'll be honest, to me the first city sounds nicer. I'd rather live in a place where everyone says what they think rather than holding it in. I'd rather hear the occasional hurtful or offensive thing than live in a place where I feel like I always have to watch my tongue.
I also recognize though that this may be a matter of personal preference. It may also be a matter of privilege. I'm relatively privileged in most of the ways that matter (though not all), so I feel like I have relatively little to lose. I have a lot of sympathy for the perspective of a person who thinks it is important that we actively shut down and discourage offensive, bigoted, or otherwise harmful speech.
III.
What I'm really trying to get at here is how "freedom of speech" is mostly about culture and norms. Laws matter, but only in fairly extreme situations. Most day-to-day discourse is determined much more by implicit social norms than legal rulings. Actual freedom of speech is not a rigid set of rules one either follows or fails to follow, but an emergent property of a cultural system.
It's also notable that a culture of free speech relies in practice on certain types of restrictions, either formal or informal, on speech activity. Free speech doesn't mean speech anarchy. For instance, heckling is a form of speech. But in order to cultivate a culture of free speech, it might be necessary to discourage heckling, insults and other "uncivil" behaviors.
A common line I see on social media is people saying that we have freedom of speech, not freedom from consequences. It's also often noted that heckling, ostracizing, criticizing, etc are all themselves speech acts, protected just as much as any other form of speech. It's therefore hypocritical to say you favor free speech but then turn around and yell at people who are exercising their perfectly legal rights.
But I think that this approach is overly legalistic and technical. On a high level, if you want a society where people feel free to express themselves on controversial topics, you actually do need freedom from consequences. It doesn't take secret police or official censorship to shut someone up - normal social consequences will do the job fine in many cases.
And often that's the point! A lot of folks today are invested in using ostracization, heckling, low-key harassment, etc to silence others from expressing views they think are harmful. This isn't inherently illegitimate - it fits within the current legal system just fine. And if the views in question are genuinely harmful to speak aloud, this sort of silencing may be a good thing in certain circumstances.
What I object to is the idea that this can all be done with no cost, or that it ought to be scaled to the max against every "problematic" view. There are real benefits to being able to just talk openly about things, and the more rigid your discourse rules become, the more of those benefits you lose.
IV.
There is one more consideration I haven't really touched on. Sometimes, shutting down one point of view is necessary to let marginalized points of view thrive. For instance, if you permit people to say things that make [marginalized group] uncomfortable, many members of that group will take that as a sign to stay quiet (or walk away entirely). If you create norms against whatever sorts of speech make [marginalized group] uncomfortable, you may be able to bring that group back into the conversation and increase the overall diversity of ideas within your discourse.
My experience is that this is often true, and is by far the strongest justification for adopting more restrictive speech norms.
Note, however, that the ultimate point is still to cultivate spaces where discourse can flourish. This still requires real trade-offs. You have to leave space for actual serious disagreement - after all, if everyone already knows what the right thing is, there's no point to having discourse at all other than just gassing each other up.
Also, once you open this up as an option, you create incentives for each group to make itself appear marginalized and emphasize their own fragility in the face of opposing viewpoints. This opens up an entire meta-discourse about which groups are marginalized and what specific views ought to be permissible vs out-of-bounds. The problems here are not unsolvable. But we ought to be aware of these types of problems and exercise some care to handle them well.
V.
My final attempt at synthesis here is to say that, instead of arguing about technical and legalistic "free speech" issues, we ought to take seriously the idea of cultivating spaces where healthy discourse can happen. This has very little to do with the First Amendment and everything to do with building a culture that genuinely values ideas and discussion as positive things to be cultivated.
"Civilized discourse" as an idea has become right-wing coded in some places, seen as having no purpose other than silencing the weak and empowering the strong. And admittedly, it can have this effect. People who benefit from the status quo and possess social and cultural capital can use civilized discourse norms to quietly silence their opposition while keeping their own privileges sacrosanct.
But the same can easily be said about more modern norms of speech. Long lists of phrases you aren't allowed to say, constantly changing terminology, and complex rules of proper conduct are just as easily co-opted by the privileged to their own benefit as the normal rules of "civilized discourse."
There is no simple solution. But if we want healthy discourse communities, I think the most important thing is for leaders and thinkers to actually see that as a thing worth striving for.
Fortunately, perfection here is not necessary - humanity is blessed by the simple fact that we crave to express ourselves and be known to others, even at great risk to ourselves. This is a valuable thing, and it's important that we not smash it out of fear of what some people might say.