Free speech gives us the ability to react vigorously with effective arguments and expose the weakness and misdirection of the other side's claims.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Free speech is the cornerstone to every right we have.
One of the problems with defending free speech is you often have to defend people that you find to be outrageous and unpleasant and disgusting.
I'm not an absolutist about free speech. Intellectually, I believe that most of the time it's better to let things get said, argue them, and put lies and stupidities to rest. Practically, I know that newspapers rarely issue corrections with the same prominence they give to denouncements - and Twitter, by its nature, never does.
Free speech carries with it some freedom to listen.
Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.
Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.
You know, everybody believes in free speech until you start questioning them about it.
The right of free speech cannot be parceled out based on whether we want to hear what the speaker has to say or whether we agree with those views. It means, quite often, tolerating the expression of views that we find distasteful, perhaps even repugnant.
We need to defend absolutely the freedom of speech.
It's always easy to get people to condemn threats to free speech when the speech being threatened is speech that they like. It's much more difficult to induce support for free speech rights when the speech being punished is speech they find repellent.