That was a very thoughtful Response. You make some excellent points. especially the idea that freedom of speech serves society as a whole. It allows for new ideas to be presented, meaning new ideas can appear as needed.

My studies have taught me that a useful distinction can be made between political speech and other speech. That comes from defining the political process as the process of effecting choices for the community as a whole.

In that way of characterizing it, ‘primary’ political speech can be thought of as speech proposing a choice for the community to effect. That speech must be absolutely unconstrained.

‘Secondary’ political speech, then, would be speech for or against a proposed choice. Constraints on it should be limited to banning ad hominem argumentation, but that should be banned completely. It detracts from the purpose of political speech, which is to decide on the best choices for the community as a whole to effect (and how to go about that), and nothing about any person has anything to do with that.

The only illegitimate outcomes in the political process would be to constrain political speech more than that or to place illegitimate restrictions on political rights: the right to vote, run for office, peaceably assemble, and petition government. Any other outcome — including constraints on other speech — would be legitimate (provided they were achieved without breaking the law or denying/limiting the political rights of any individuals).

There’s more to it than that, related to the issue of justice itself, but that is the gist of it.

I would note that the existence of ‘counter protesters’ when any group has gone through the process to organize a legitimate assemblage is itself an illegitimate constraint on those folks’ right of peaceable assembly. I remember when the Ku Klux Klan had a rally in a small town north of Atlanta back in the early 80’s. Three thousand or so people attended it. The people who were against the Klan did the right thing. They let them have their rally, unchallenged. They then applied for their own rally, and had more than ten times as many people show up for their assemblage — about 35,000.