Answers to 12 Bad Anti-Free Speech Arguments: Featuring That XKCD Cartoon Everyone Likes to Quote!

Areo Magazine ^ | 2021/05/25 | Greg Lukianoff

[Lurker]

“That’s not what the First Amendment is for. You have the right to say what you want, I have the right to disagree and to let you know that.”

You’re partially correct. Your error is in not grasping the point of that particular part of the article. Of course you have the right to disagree. What you don’t have the right to do is shout someone down or, even worse, use or threaten to use violence to shut them up.

Cases in point include Ann Coulter or Ben Shapiro being run off college campuses by violent mobs that prevented them from speaking while paid agents of the government did nothing to prevent the violence. Worse still they acquiesced to that violence thereby making them complicit in it.

In such cases those paid agents of the government have a legal and moral duty to protect the speakers.

L

[DoodleDawg]

What you don’t have the right to do is shout someone down or, even worse, use or threaten to use violence to shut them up.

I would ask 'why not?' on the first part and would agree with you on the second. But violence is not a protected Constitutional right under any circumstances.

[Lurker]

“I would ask ‘why not?’ on the first part…”

Because in the examples I gave it was paid agents of the government allowing it when their clear duty is to protect the speakers.

That’s why.

L