Jason Richwine: "Free Speech Matters, Even When It's Not Protected By The First Amendment"

Agreed.
   Of course the vocal vanguard of the progressive left tends to leap immediately to ad hominems--and what they tend to say in response to arguments like Richwine's is: you just want to use racist epithets without suffering any consequences. (In Richwine's particular case, of course, they have more specific ad hominems to level, too.) Of course they're wrong, as usual. And it's hard to believe that the argument is even sincere. We're not facing a social situation in which all speech is permitted except for screaming racial epithets. We're facing a case in which wide swaths of permissible speech are being suppressed by extremely powerful private groups and organizations. And in which merely asserting that someone is e.g. a racist can do great harm to them. And in which the groups and organizations previously mentioned are willing to level such charges at the drop of a hat.
   As conservatives--and the remaining rag-tag remnants of liberalism--keep pointing out, the First Amendment protects free speech because free speech is good and important. It doesn't create a right, it protects a right.
   And, of course: the progressive left is committed to suppressing speech--and thought--because its arguments are generally shit. It can't win in the marketplace of ideas. Its only hope is to exert nonrational pressure on people, bullying them into agreement/submission.