Time and time again, we hear and see things we may or may not agree with. Scrolling through Twitter or Facebook on a daily basis, I see things from my friends and family that I don’t often see eye-to-eye with.
However, in the free-market place of ideas that exists in America, we do ourselves a disservice if we attempt to block or shut out these ideas that other people hold. In this day in age, it seems as though many people attempt to live in their own echo chamber of ideas that nothing from the outside can permeate and everything within this echo chamber is taken as the truth without a single outside idea refuting it. The more we attempt to shut out ideas that may not align with our own, the more we let these ideas divide us as people, soon we only become defined by the ideas we have instead of our morals.
However, this issue is only a small factor behind the assault on free speech that seems to be currently taking over the United States. All anyone has to do is turn on any mainstream media station such as Fox or CNN to see another conservative speaker being banned from another college campus or see a group of violent protestors attempting to shut down their speech, all because of ideas that don’t align with what they perceive as being reputable. It seems as though, as we become increasingly divided as a country, individuals are showing more animosity towards people and ideas that may not align with their own.
With this animosity growing, it’s as if ideas outside of what you perceive as correct no longer matter and only the facts that skew in your favor are important. Fortunately for everyone, this is not the original concept of free speech that the United States was founded on. In the opinion of this writer, free speech is either all okay or none of it’s OK.
The United States was NOT founded on the idea that only one belief matters and that one belief cannot be challenged by any idea that may not agree with this one belief. The United States was founded on the idea of there being an open marketplace of ideas that all ideas and speech can compete in. The actions that go along with the free speech and the reactions to this free speech are the things that we should be focused on because there is a large difference between free speech and the consequences of free speech.
However, at the end of the day, free speech is something that we cannot compromise on, it doesn’t matter if certain ideas don’t go along with your beliefs, it is still important that we protect it because it’s essential to American ideas and values.
