There are people I follow who actually make a living protecting free speech. I still do it for free. I welcome any corrections.
I think that you've come to the moment when you actually understand free speech when you stop asking what people were saying before you choose to defend of condemn their actions.
If you hold a rally in a public park, I'm gonna defend your right. I don't care if your demonstration is another antisemitic rant or if you're marching to save kittens. You have a right to speak. We have a right to hear.
If you block traffic on Union Hills to make your point, there's a fucking hospital right there. I don't care if it's another antisemitic rant, or if you're blocking traffic in order to save kittens, if my mom is having a stroke and you're in the way, you're a fucking speed bump.
The right to free speech is more valuable than any one of our lives. It's a right that I'm willing to die for. It's a right I'm willing to kill for. It's important enough to understand it.
You can express your opinion without preventing people from picking up their kids from daycare, or making people late for work. You can express your opinion without damaging priceless works of art, and preventing people from seeing that work of art. You can express your opinion without smashing windows and setting buildings on fire.
I've had to have this conversation with a couple dozen leftists in recent years who thought that they were schooling me on free speech and the First Amendment. This is bizarre. It's the radical left that generally want to say that speech is violence and silence is violence. They're the same people who want to tell us that climate activists and pro-Hamas protesters should be allowed to keep me from getting my mom to the hospital, because their message is just that fucking important.
I'm not even exaggerating. There was a case in the UK wherein a guy was trying to get his mom to the hospital while she was having a stroke. Protesters blocked the road for five fucking hours. The woman permanently lost the ability to speak. If your concept of free speech is that of taking away another person's ability to speak, you're fucking mental.