It’s not 1993 any more. The arrival of a globally ubiquitous internet, and the subsequent introduction of social network feeds that insist Helen and Walter enc

It’s not 1993 any more. The arrival of a globally ubiquitous internet, and the subsequent introduction of social network feeds that insist Helen and Walter encounter five pages of engagement bait if they want to get updates on their granddaughter, have made the consequences of “free speech” less obvious to many people. Speech has qualitatively different impact than it did 50, 100, or 200 years ago. So people are stepping back and considering whether the same thinking that applied to local marches, print journalism, and cable news still makes sense in the same way for what appears to be a different landscape. Maybe you think that’s a dumb question, or maybe you already made up your mind about it, but when context seems to change dramatically, people are bound to revisit old conclusions. You can be frustrated about that, but you can’t avoid it. If your own conclusion is important to you, you’ll do the best job advocating for it by understanding why reasonable people are revisiting the matter, helping them see why free speech is still vital rather than shaming them for being reflective.