This is very much about fighting two viruses: one biological and the other one informational. We agree to limit contacts between people to stop the one but do not accept the same method to stop the other. Why? In both cases it is vital to ensure the measures to not cross certain boundaries and are rolled back.
Free speech used to be more of an ubiquitous social courtesy like that, yes.
However, that courtesy is rapidly disappearing in our society and free speech is being distilled down to its legal core which is: "you won't go to jail if you say something unpopular"
Everything else is on the table including losing your job, being boycotted, being hounded on social media, and otherwise ruining your life.
I personally like society better when free speech is a social courtesy extended to everyone by everyone, but... society's values change, and right now "harm reduction" is king.
Oh, come on. Social consequences have been part of history since the start of the US, and long before that elsewhere too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Brown_(loyalist)
> On 2 August 1775 a crowd of Sons of Liberty confronted him at his house. Brown requested the liberty to hold his own opinions, saying that he could "never enter into an Engagement to take up arms against the Country which gave him being", and finally met their demands with pistol and sword. Taken prisoner with a fractured skull, he was tied to a tree where he was roasted by fire, scalped, tarred, and feathered. This mistreatment resulted in the loss of two toes and lifelong headaches.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Titus
> Despite Robert's importance in Rehoboth community, he began to have problems with his fellow townsmen. On June 6, 1654, he was told to move his family out of the Plymouth Colony for allowing Abner Ordway and family, "persons of evil fame", to live in his home. The practice of banishing a family from the colony was known as a "Warning Out Notice."
Black people got lynched for using their right to free speech for much of this country's history. People who piss off their communities have been banished or exiled or worse for millennia. Our close cousins in the animal kingdom do the same thing; if you're a dick, you're either the new leader or you're out of the group.
It never meant that. People have always been similarly free to say "that guy is a dick, we shouldn't invite him to our get togethers" based on your free speech.
It's entirely legal - and often appropriate - for someone with shitty views to be persecuted. People who march in neo-Nazi rallies with swastikas should see non-governmental consequences for their actions.
Who decides what counts as shitty views? Is it decided solely based off your political preference? How do you feel about people who march in pro-socialim rallies facing see non-governmental consequences for their actions, during the mccarthy era?
Society.
> Is it decided solely based off your political preference?
No, you might have "good" politics and also be an asshole.
> How do you feel about people who march in pro-socialim rallies facing see non-governmental consequences for their actions, during the mccarthy era?
I would suggest that the fact that the era's named after a US Senator implies it wasn't all "non-governmental consequences".
I heard anti-communism was pretty popular back in the day. Does that mean such actions should be endorsed/allowed?
>I would suggest that the fact that the era's named after a US Senator implies it wasn't all "non-governmental consequences".
So your only objection to that was the government interventions?
Sure, why not? If you (or even your entire neighborhood) don't want to have a garden party with an open communist, that's your right. I similarly have the right to say "you're a dick for doing that". If I'm a civil rights activist, I have a right to endorse the Montgomery bus boycott, too.
> So your only objection to that was the government interventions?
With a fairly wide definition of "government interventions", yes. The Comics Code is something I'd consider intervention; "we'll self-regulate under threat of external regulation" is something I consider government intervention and a First Amendment violation in this case. The same for McCarthy's driving a fellow senator to suicide via abuse of power (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_C._Hunt).
Ostracizing and later persecuting Jews was supported by large parts of the population in 1930's Germany and Eastern Europe. According to your logic, that made it OK too then?
"I won't give them equal protection under the law because of that dislike" is another story.
The treatment of Jews in 1930s Germany went well beyond "we don't like your views and thus won't hang out with you".
The "free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences" crowd are more dangerous than the coronavirus.
Or one could say: Though I was alive through the War on Terror, I don't think giving exceptions to restrictions meant to protect individuals and peoples from extreme concentrations of global powers will tend to go wrong. Those in power will only use the new powers in the cases that I agree with, and not go further.