1. Anyone (like Sasse) who reduces the value of freedom of speech to a single thing is missing the point of freedom. Free speech brings about multiple good things, or rather, it brings about the opportunity for them. AMONG those good things are truth, culture, democracy, beauty, and autonomy.

April 10, 2026 - 16:45 UTC

1
0
0
2. I have only once in my life encountered someone who literally equated a certain style of communication with literal violence, and that person was a literal idiot. Certainly communication can have a powerful emotional impact on its own, but nearly everyone understands what a damn metaphor is.
1
0
0
Which is to say, when you see or read "that kind of speech is violence," you are going to understand that metaphor in good faith and not like Sasse's hypothetically obtuse anonymous college student, who I do not believe exists in sufficient quantity to be worth an instant's anxiety.
1
0
1