Today we are tackling the topic of freedom of speech—it's a huge topic that's been on my mind lately because of things happening out in the world. Not just because I see certain things being censored online, it's also how I'm seeing people react to that. So today we're digging into this topic and giving you some ways to look at freedom of speech as we move forward.


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Let's start with a metaphor.

Let’s pretend that I invite all of you to a campfire at my farm, and I say it’s a happy wonderful place where anyone is welcome for conversation and friendship.

And everyone starts having conversations.

And then I happen hear you talking about church, or being a vegan, or cops, or your brother and his boyfriend getting married, or being pro-life or pro-choice, and every time you open your mouth, I talk over you.

Or I move you away from the campfire where no one can hear you.

Friends, this is no longer a campfire where anyone is welcome for conversation and friendship.

And this, my friends, is what social media is turning into.

Now, if I don’t want certain things talked about at my campfire, that’s my right because it’s my farm. But I can’t go around telling people that my campfire is a happy wonderful place where anyone is welcome for conversation and friendship if I'm also going to tell people what they can and can't talk about.
Free speech: what does it actually mean?
The crazy thing is that we've got a lot of people saying they believe in free speech. We've got people super angry that some of these campfires (or social media) are censoring people, mostly themselves.

But at the same time, they get angry when someone at a campfire starts blasting off an opinion they don't like. They usually end up asking the person who has the campfire to tell that person to leave because, “you can’t say that here!”

Free speech means it’s okay to have an opinion and it’s okay to voice that opinion -- even if someone doesn’t agree with you. It would be super cool if this actually meant voicing that opinion in a respectful manner, but let’s be real. This is America and we are humans and most people start frothing at the mouth about the rightness of what they believe.
The thing about free speech
Here's a really cool thing about free speech. If you’re sitting at the campfire with someone who is spouting off opinions that you don’t agree with, and you think they have crossed the line into jerk territory—you can pick up your chair.

You can move your seat at the campfire.

I don’t think that free speech was ever supposed to mean threatening to bash peoples' skulls in. I think it was more supposed to have to do with when we don’t like something the government is doing, we can go ahead and express that. In any event, go ahead and say the super tough and super cool things you want to say—because then I get to decide how I interact with you after that.

It's really a win-win for both of us. 
Freedom of speech is hard.
People are figuring out that freedom of speech is actually difficult to sit nicely with. Because if it’s okay that I say what I want, it’s okay that you say what you want. And that’s really easy if we agree with each other. And it’s even pretty ok if we agree to disagree with other. But when we flat out disagree on something that we believe so hard core in the pit of our very stomachs, for most people, it’s really hard to contemplate freedom of speech in all of that.

In real life, most people have a really hard time if someone strongly believes a certain thing that totally goes against what you believe in. But if you actually believe in freedom of speech,...