The Weight of Words

I have been mulling over free speech since my previous post on the topic. Despite the response my blog post got from BD's crowd, I myself am certainly not anti-free speech. I've come to realize that my fundamental difference with absolutists is that I believe giving everyone a seat at the table, including those who would erode the rights of everyone else sitting, if given the opportunity, only permits free speech in the short-term. I believe taking extraordinary measures with extraordinary circumstances is necessary to allow everyone else to maintain their freedom of speech indefinitely. John Rawls, and his notion of reasonable pluralism, is a society built on real disagreement, but that doesn't owe a seat to every disagreement, only to the ones that accept that other people are allowed to exist and be wrong. A reasonable doctrine would never use power to erase the doctrines sitting beside it. The unreasonable ones are the ones that would. The accommodation a free society extends…