I wasn't always as fervent a supporter of free speech as I am now. In fact, I was rather conservative and censorious in my youth.
My journey started when I took a class in high school called Law in Society and we were tasked with basic debate club roles on the issue of the book Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors. This was a book written by a true crime author which was clearly intended to be a simple piece of entertainment for her audience; but, a person was contracted to murder a family over a trust fund and the murderer said that he followed the instructions of the book.
Since this 1993 case the book has become largely unavailable for purchase (hence why I couldn't read it for the class) because it was decided that the publisher and author could be held legally liable for the content of the book.
I was tasked with defending the book, which I didn't want to do; but, I'm glad I did.
There's no evidence that the murders were inspired by the book. They clearly weren't. The murderer was still caught. As I said earlier, the book was clearly written for entertainment with no intent to support or incite violence. So far as I could tell, and still believe, this book fell under First Amendment protection rather easily.
It was after that discussion that I started to really believe in freedom of speech as a legal matter and somewhat as a moral matter.
In the time after that I adopted most libertarian values and started to pay more attention to economics and science. I was still passively in favor of free speech; but, I wasn't committed.
Then January 7th, 2015 happened.
That was when twelve people in Paris, most of whom worked for a satirical magazine that I never heard of, were murdered by a couple of jihadists who didn't like what they were saying.
My reaction wasn't immediate. I knew that something evil had just happened; but, I didn't get the full scope of it.
While the bodies were still warm we started hearing questions like, "Well, what did they say?" That's when I started to notice my mind going straight to the question, "Why does it matter? What could somebody say to justify murder?"
People kept asking the question.
Then the apologists for the murderers started piping up. The whataboutists started to interject. The people who Salman Rushdie called the but' brigade started to shout that anybody who said "Je Suis Charlie" was an islomophobe.
Since I'm not the smartest person on the planet, it took me a couple of weeks to work through what was happening.
Freedom of speech wasn't being attacked by a government; yet, it was still a free speech issue. That took a bit to sink in with me. That's a foreign concept to far too many libertarians.
There were private actors defending violence against people for opening their mouths and producing what they regarded to be the wrong sounds. There still are.
I'm sad to say that I'm too dumb to have immediately realized what was happening seven years ago; but, it eventually sunk in and I realized that freedom of speech doesn't stop in law. It's a moral principle that we can't allow to bend -- much less break.
Since then I've had my nose buried in books on the issue. I've become increasingly saddened by the fact that most people seem to not think that there are any worthwhile books to read on free speech. I've been talked down to countless times when I've (correctly) pointed out that hate speech laws aren't a thing in the USA.
I've read Flemming Rose's book The Tyranny of Silence which chronicled the European "cartoon crisis" which resulted in several cartoonists facing death and having the authorities turn a blind eye because of what they said. I read Charb's book, which was published after he was murdered for his speech, in which a Frenchman made the argument for the cultural value of free speech in a country that has been legally hypercritical. I read Jonathan Rauch's book Kindly Inquisitors in which he argued for a culture of "Liberal Science". A culture in which we speak freely and expect others to speak freely in opposition, even if it hurts us.
Most importantly, I read Aryeh Neier's book Defending my Enemy. "The first place to defend freedom is the first place it is denied."
So, understand that this is a position taken out of experience and education. There may be two or three people who I know, who know more about this than I do and for whom I'll just sit down and listen.
Outside of those few people, if you take your argument about free speech to me, understand you're probably taking a knife to a gun fight.
