No doubt, these censors and would-be censors have the best of intentions. But you've really got your head up your own ass if you convince yourself that you are protecting people by deciding the information that is appropriate for them to be exposed to. I just don't understand the shortsightedness, the naivete, or the willingness to discard the principle of free speech.
Imagine you have free speech. Yay! Now what? Why was this so important again? Free speech is not an end goal. It's a tool that serves a purpose. In the relationship between a powerful government and a collection of individually vulnerable citizens, it pushes the power balance farther toward the individual. Is the goal to give all the power to the individual? No, that's not the goal. The goal is to have some sort of e…
> Free speech is not an end goal. It's a tool that serves a purpose.
You seem to hold that view that each legal right granted to people is a tool for a purpose. But some things are held, by some, to be worthwhile for their own sake. They are regarded as intrinsically worthwhile.
Consider:
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed [...]"
That famous text talks about noble ideas such as life, freedom and justice as intrinsically worthwhile. They are not being granted as tools to provide some other social utility. They are the goals themselves.
It doesn't say life is protected because it makes society better, or that freedom is granted because it makes society more efficient or something.
It's the other way around. Within that framework for thinking about values, society and government are the tools; and life, freedom and happiness are the worthy goals.
Is it such a stretch to consider that free speech is part of personal freedom itself, therefore free speech is an intrinsically worthwhile goal to protect in and of itself?
If you do believe free speech is intrinsically worth protecting as part of life, freedom and happiness, you will surely butt up against the hard reality that it causes injustice and misery in some contexts by its effects. Speech has effects which deprive other people of these same intrinsically worthwhile things, including depriving other people of meaningful free speech. Ethical dilemmas do exist around free speech. Nonetheless, if you believe that it's intrinsically worthwhile because freedom is, you will surely make every effort to resolve ethical dilemmas in a way that keeps free speech as an elevated, worthwhile goal in and of itself, without it needing to be justified as a tool for any other purpose.