It is not enough that Americans have Constitutional rights to free speech. We can't live with each other unless we have a culture of rights, in which we respect each other's rights to say things we don't like. That's disappearing incredibly fast, which is spectacularly dangerous.
The hard Left pushes where it meets least resistance. So they promulgated hate speech policies on college campuses, where the administration was sure to cave; they moved on to newsrooms, where editors were sure to cave.
Now they're targeting corporate boardrooms, where risk aversion dominates, and seeking to weaponize corporate risk aversion to take down social media platforms. The result: a closed system in which only approved opinions are allowed.
Alternatives will be built, but this will only increase the silo-ing of opinion that polarizes the country politically and culturally. And because the hard Left sees fealty to Constitutional ideals as a form of bigotry -- fruit of the poisonous tree -- they won't stop there.
Eventually culture becomes law. And the hard Left has made no bones about its willingness to override even legal rights once the time is ripe. To paraphrase Madison out of context, we cannot rely on "parchment barriers against the encroaching spirit of power."
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