You are wrong. Most people that support true free speech don't believe that all ideas are equally good. That's false. They believe that all people should be allowed to express their ideas, regardless of how great or how disgusting they may be.
The reason is that if you try to stop people from speaking freely, eventually over time the tables will turn against you, meaning you won't be able to speak freely.
We need the laws that protect our most vile haters to speak freely, so that in the future if they gain control somehow, those same laws will protect us. If you start carving out exceptions because "those people are obviously wrong", well when the tables turn, like they always do, they will use those same ideas against you.
The other benefit from this is that when people are allowed to speak freely, you can see what they are actually thinking, instead of having their ideas get stifled and brought underground. This is exactly what happened with Trump and how he got voted, and why all the polls were wrong about Trump and Brexit. People who held different ideas were driven underground, and they spoke at the voting booths. That's dangerous.
> The reason is that if you try to stop people from speaking freely, eventually over time the tables will turn against you, meaning you won't be able to speak freely.
I think there are ways to "try to stop people from speaking freely" that are acceptable and indeed vital. We as a society generally have conventions around what speech is appropriate, and we generally teach people (both explicitly and implicitly) to, for example, ask for things nicely, compliment people, express gratitude, etc. And we as a society generally "punish" people who violate these conventions by being reluctant to interact with those people. I don't see this as a violation of freedom of speech in any sense.
And also, I don't really agree with the mode of argument of "eventually the tables will turn against you." I don't oppose strict legal consequences for murder, for instance, because one day someone might frame me for murder. I support the legal consequences for murder and I support various mechanisms to increase the likelihood that only actual murderers receive those consequences.
> We as a society generally have conventions around what speech is appropriate
80 years back you would not be able to express freely your defence of homosexuality. Before that you would not be able to "talk back" to the pope. Said conventions are rarely sane or fair.
> And we as a society generally "punish" people who violate these conventions by being reluctant to interact with those people.
Or mob on them by calling them to be banned from a conference or to get fired.
> I don't oppose strict legal consequences for murder
There are victims in murder. There are no victims when you express your opinion about something. In my experience most people who get censored are not bigots, in fact they even follow the wider social conventions, the issue is that they do not follow the specific social conventions that the extremist groups that are anti-free speech want to enforce.
No, your analogy is wrong. It's not increasing the legal consequences for murder. What you are advocating for is loosening the description of what murder is. That's the point.
When you loosen what constitutes a "crime", then yes eventually the tables will turn on you, because those with the power will use it to the fullest they can. That's the nature of fascism. When people can no longer even ask a question or engage in a discussion and instead are outright cancelled without actually engaging in the act, then that is what "loosening a definition" is.
> Most people that support true free speech don't believe that all ideas are equally good. That's false.
I don't think that most or even many people believe that all ideas are equally good, but there are absolutely many people who invoke "freedom of speech" in their opposition to efforts to argue or establish that certain speech is bad.
The reason is that if you try to stop people from speaking freely, eventually over time the tables will turn against you, meaning you won't be able to speak freely.
We need the laws that protect our most vile haters to speak freely, so that in the future if they gain control somehow, those same laws will protect us. If you start carving out exceptions because "those people are obviously wrong", well when the tables turn, like they always do, they will use those same ideas against you.
The other benefit from this is that when people are allowed to speak freely, you can see what they are actually thinking, instead of having their ideas get stifled and brought underground. This is exactly what happened with Trump and how he got voted, and why all the polls were wrong about Trump and Brexit. People who held different ideas were driven underground, and they spoke at the voting booths. That's dangerous.