Certain things used to be more, well, self-evident. A great many of us didn’t necessarily like that the First Amendment protected speech we disagreed with, or that even made us afraid, but we accepted it. An agreed-upon duty to protect the right to expression irrespective of its content existed, and we knew ensuring that liberty was not the same as endorsing what might be said with it. We understood that if we allowed government and other institutions to block one person’s speech they would block others’—right up until they came for us.
Then in November 2016 came a collective mental breakdown. An almost organic sense that overnight America had set itself on the path to fascism set in, and became justification for the weakening of the First Amendment. Free speech is now seen by many as a liability, an enabling tool for anyone labeled a “Nazi.” Some 69 percent of American college students believe hate speech (“using language on campus intentionally offensive to certain groups”) should be banned by the government.
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