There's also a conscious belief on behalf of immigrant families like my own that the reason we came to this country is for the free speech, so when we see American institutions that do not seem to care, we wonder if America actually lives up to its promises.
Of course not. But that’s what the wave of woke left wing Twitter mobs (and the likes of AOC, etc.) are pushing for. You have authoritarians on the left and authoritarians on the right, and an ever shrinking center. Not sure how we get out of this predicament.
I'm a child of immigrants. I grew up watching my non-white parents adopt white mannerisms and cultural norms, join a white church, live in a white neighborhood, etc. in a very racially diverse town because any other choice would put them at a disadvantage. My complaint is not that this country fails to live up to its promises, my complaint is that the promise itself is twisted.
There are many ways you can value "free speech." This author has a particular one in mind, and thinks that everyone should agree with that specific interpretation. I, too, value free speech, and an introductory step there is that people can and perhaps should have different opinions on what exactly that means. As an extreme example, if one person, motivated by a desire to uphold free speech, says that invited speakers may use racial slurs because words shouldn't be censored, and another person, motivated by a desire to uphold free speech, says that speakers may not use racial slurs because they insult people for who they are which is antithetical to meaningful debate, both of those views seem to me like they are valid approaches to "free speech."
What I object to is the view that exactly one of those interpretations is right and that there must not even be debate about it. It's a short step from there to saying that certain racial slurs or (less egregiously but more insidiously) stereotypes or assumptions are within the bounds of free speech and other ones are not, that certain attacks are noble and others are blasphemous, etc.
That's the road that gets us to calls to cancel e.g. the 1619 Project from people who two minutes earlier were complaining about "cancel culture." That's how we get the fundamental dishonesty that makes a lot of people feel like "free speech" is a tool of white supremacy or whatever - because an actual illiberal approach to society is being called "free speech" and nobody is willing to call it what it is.
> both of those views seem to me like they are valid approaches to "free speech
Except they're not. One vision is quite literally very controlled speech. It may be appropriately called 'civil speech' or 'appropriate speech' but it is not free speech.
You cannot take a thing, call another thing that thing, and then attempt to claim the first thing is actually the second thing.
The first view you espoused does not preclude the second view from being discussed within its framework, whereas the second one does preclude the first. This very salient difference means that even by your metrics the first is superior.
The 1619 project should be allowed, it should just be mocked for being completely made up, and the newspaper that published it should be relegated to the garbage bin of history for printing something do devoid of reality. That doesn't mean it should be canceled.
