Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health
I have a foreign wife and it really drives home one truth: America is a very nuanced place. We have this idea of almost unlimited free speech. Which sounds great, but in practice, it is not really true. Because ultimately, Americans do not have equal rights. We see this over and over in different aspects of society. The Frederick Douglas example from Boston in the article is a great example of why free speech is good. But the truth is it is the same kind of people who are always preventing free speech in meaningful ways. If your takeaway from the speech is that &quot;all kinds of speech need to be heard&quot;, you might be philosophically correct. But, again, in practice, the people in power do not allow free speech. And this is fundamentally different from most examples of cancel culture.