I spent the majority of my first thirty years of life either not caring about free speech or regarding the issue, as most people seem to do, as something that is merely opinion. For the most part of my adult life I was a supporter of free speech insofar as I took it for granted and didn't actively try to shut people up.
Then January 7th, 2015 happened and I spent most of that time since reading books about free speech, the philosophy behind the First Amendment, and an amount of case law that I never thought I would be able to stomach.
This is also where I started to realize how correct Jonathan Haidt's analogy of the elephant and the rider is.
When January 7th, 2015 happened, right out of the gate people were asking what the cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo said. I lacked the intellectual acuity to respond in an educated manner. My gut just lead me to, "Why does it fucking matter?" The belief was there that no speech is justly punished with murder. Still, for seemingly thousands of people if not millions, there was an attitude that maybe the cartoonists were asking for it.
Subsequent years have yielded platitudes like "Free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences." and "Silence is violence." which, when those phrases come out of the same mouths combine into belief in both censorship and compelled speech. People don't seem to realize that they're contradicting themselves and the core liberal value because, really, I think that most of us were taught to think of free speech as simply an opinion. We've been taught to think of free speech with the sophistication of The Dude, "That's just like...your opinion, man." rather than an actual value.
It took an act of absolute evil for me to actually view free speech as it should be viewed -- the most important liberal value that should be cherished, preserved, and fought for to the death. It's also something that you can and should learn about. This can't stop with your platitudes.