>I'm distressed and saddened at how many of the free speech proponents on HN are treating the events of January 6 as if it was just another protest and not an existential threat to the republic.

Could you present an explanation for why?

> If the mob had managed to find and destroy the electoral certificates,

Then nothing different would happen because this particular part of the vote is a formality. Well, the news would be even more one sided on this, but nothing else.

>or if the flex-cuffs guys had captured members of congress

Assuming worse case and he actually killed someone, why would it be much different than attacks in the past like the one at the soft/baseball game. As you said, that it failed is irrelevant to the intended goal.

>The western liberal value of free speech has never extended to incitement of violence.

Yes it has.

First, there is political speech which is going through the most proper channels to enact violence. If you get a law passed, you are forcing people to comply under threat of violence. Talking about changing laws is very central to free speech and includes protecting people pushing even the most cartoonishly evil laws.

But on a more general since, still sticking to US law, the courts have allowed for calls to violence in general and have been very limited in how they restrict it. For example look at all that was said during the summer that was encouraging of riots (not the things said in support of the protests, but said in support of the riots). That is still largely protected free speech.

And on an even more general scale, the concept of free speech does apply to what the founding fathers were discussing leading up to and during the revolutionary war. Sure, Britain's laws would have punished them for it, but the value of free speech that let them rebel is something that was understood and accepted by those forming the new government.