To a degree you're right, but it's a somewhat navel-gazing point. There are circumstances where killing someone is legally and (arguably) ethically justified. (

To a degree you're right, but it's a somewhat navel-gazing point. There are circumstances where killing someone is legally and (arguably) ethically justified. (Defence, for example.) It's fine to adopt the principle "don't kill people" as an ideal, but - similarly to your point about free speech - it's naive to think an actual ruleset can derive from this ideal alone. Your point is reducible to "things are complicated", which - while true! - is kind of obvious. No speech is unequivocally free, but there's certainly a gradient of more free to less free. I've spent time in North Korea, and boy was I glad when I crossed the Sinuiju-Dandong bridge back to China. And then on the other end of the scale there are things you can say in New York you could be prosecuted for in London. When someone says they want "free speech", they're saying they want to push the norms more towards the free end of the spectrum. It's fine to ask: "OK, how do we do that? What, specifically, does that entail in the present situation?" And those questions may entail compromises and nuances that aren't entirely satisfactory to everyone involved, while still all in all bolstering the ability to speak freely. Free speech is messy and abstract, but it does exist in a meaningful sense, and there are concrete things that can bolster and weaken it. If someone says they want "more free speech", that's a meaningful political statement.