The distinction between free speech as a legal right and cultural value

This is an argument against laws, corruption, and government. It is not, however, an argument against any particular position on speech. A capricious supreme court could revert to the speech precedent the US had for the first 150 years of it's existence, which we both presumably agree is flawed. Laws can be written and misapplied.

Neither of those things being possible suggests that, as a value, free speech maximalism is superior to free speech...almost maximalism. It's clear that you can have stability and discussion and support for fairly extreme ideologies under the more restrictive speech standards of Europe.

Since you must have already read my above comment about punishable speech that "in context, directly causes specific imminent serious harm", you must now be arguing that there are words beyond that which cause violence. That's wrong. Words are not violence. When you punish speech that does not cause violence, you turn into the censor. Consider how you sound when you argue this point [1]. It draws people towards the cause you seek to censor, not away from it. You enable your opponent, just as Anthony Comstock did over a hundred years ago. People root for the underdog, they want to hear both sides, and to be trusted to make up their own minds. When you take away their ability to choose, you become their enemy, not their ally.

> the argument you're presenting is functionally "trust us",

Fundamentally, this is the exact opposite of the point I'm making. The censor is saying, "trust me, this was bad, seeing it will hurt you". Free speech advocates are saying, "make up your own mind" and that you have the right to associate with whomever you please.

> which, no, I don't trust the free speech advocacy org to have an objective view on the dangers of unrestricted speech.

Free speech does not mean unrestricted speech, as mentioned above.

> It is contrary to your nature.

It sounds like you feel there is no common ground to be found. Yet we are all human. We have both similarities and differences that can be discovered through conversation, some of which may be easy like this one, some of which may be hard. Giving up on that is the equivalent to saying we should either all duke it out or live separately. I'm probably not the most difficult person debate-wise you'll ever meet. You might as well start somewhere.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0T9XSG73kY&t=4889s

Correct.

> Words are not violence.

Sure. But I never claimed as such. I said words could cause violence. Combustion is not flight, and yet combustion, in the right circumstances, causes flight. Two things need not be equivalent for there to be a causal relationship between them.

> you turn into the censor.

Assuredly, but here you're begging the question. Why is becoming the censor an ill that must, at all costs, be avoided?

> It draws people towards the cause you seek to censor, not away from it.

This is a common claim, but we know it to be untrue. While certainly, some people may be drawn to the restricted section of the library, fewer people will ultimately here the material than if it's being preached about on the street. We see this with censorship all the time, both empirical examples (censorship of sex-related topics in religious communities) and quantifiable ones [0].

> Fundamentally, this is the exact opposite of the point I'm making

No, I mean that in the quote you provided, his claim that "in our experience, actually censoring makes things work" is totally unsupported. You have to trust him that that's true, and of course the guy who runs the free speech organization is going to say that censorship is bad. If he didn't believe that, he wouldn't run the free speech organization. My simple question is "what if there's a point after which free speech actually makes things worse"?

I mean you already agree that such a point exists: imminent violent action. But presumably I could come up with other examples of things you'd be okay with censoring (CSAM is a common example). If you're okay banning that speech, what's the harm in moving the needle a bit in one direction or the other, especially if moving it results in a society that is more stable?

I think there are good and nuanced answers to all of those questions, but you aren't even engaging with them because you seem to be claiming that, without exception, it is obvious that the optimal and least harmful choice when picking what speech we should ban is "imminent violence incitement and nothing else", and when I ask "why set the bar there", you quote someone who says "trust me". That's not convincing.

[0]: https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/11/study-finds-reddits-contro...

No, it's an argument for studying the history of law and understanding that some are good and some are bad. They don't come with a cover sheet saying so. You need to figure it out for yourself.

> Laws can be written and misapplied.

All the more reason to study them and give careful consideration to how they have been misapplied in the past. We're in agreement there.

You're a different commenter than above, so I'm not sure if your main point is to agree with them, disagree with me, or both, and on what exactly.

> It's clear that you can have stability and discussion and support for fairly extreme ideologies under the more restrictive speech standards of Europe.

I think any anti hate speech laws are more experimental than the American experiment. The point of free speech is to protect minority voices. It was championed in the '60s when the left needed it, and it rose from the ashes in the early 1900s after Comstock tried to surreptitiously-but-not-so-surreptitiously squash it. The censor never calls himself a censor.

What do you mean by some number of government constraints?