That's not freedom of speech, though. Its purpose is to protect unpopular, minority opinions that would otherwise be squelched; the opinions that need to be protected.

What would be the purpose of "protecting" opinions that don't need protection? It's absurd. You don't need some revolutionary ideal to do that shit; that's what happens naturally, everywhere, all of the time. The right to free expression is revolutionary because it stands out; it idealizes protecting the minority opinions that would not survive otherwise.

Freedom of speech has an achilles heel, though, in that it isn't absolute. We can't say just anything we'd like. I probably shouldn't be allowed to, for example, steal secrets from you then spread them around publicly.

The problem is, where we draw that line is based on values, and different people have different values.

Personally, I value what is true above almost anything else, so I will always support the right for someone to speak their mind truthfully even if that truth causes enormous harm. I might justify that by saying, for example, that I think that the more we build on a flawed model of the world, the greater the harm will be when when we try to lean on that flaw, so it's better to get it out of the way now rather than delay it into the future when it'll be even worse.

Of course, a lot of people disagree with me on that. So who gets to decide where the line is drawn? Personally, I think my model is superior. Not because I am superior, but because the world - reality - is superior. It is the ultimate authority, and it cannot be fooled, and the bigger the lie you tell yourself is, the more the world will slap you in the face with it. So, automatically, over time, eventually the people who think truth is important will end up in positions of power, just as a result of the more reality-challenged people weeding themselves out by refusing to adhere to an accurate model of it. Natural selection, if you'd like.

But, sort of like with vaccines, the more people who prefer truth over comfort end up in charge, the fewer problems we will have, and the fewer problems we have the more people forget why we don't have those problems, and before you know it they start coming up with crazy ideas that they don't think it's important to reality-test because they were never taught the importance of it. Then the crazy crawls out of the woodwork... along with the whooping cough, and the measels, and all the other nasty shit that a reality-tested model of the world kept at bay.

But, to get back to my original point about values, I think that a lot of the people who strongly oppose, to the point of wanting to actively censor shit like ironic jokes about racism/sexism/abelism/whatever, do it because some part of their core value system is tuned a little differently from most of the people in this sub. They don't value truth over comfort (or reals over feels), and that produces all sorts of opinions in them that are in strict contrast to ours.

...and the worst part is that the systems we're talking about are so massive and complicated, and there are so many different people and organizations involved in messing with them, that it's hard enough to unambiguously track the costs/benefits of anything to the point where even massively fucking up and making everyone you touch's lives worse is something that people can get away with for a long time just because it gets lost of the confusion.

So... we're in for a long ride, I guess. Maybe one that... never ends.

almost like it may have felt reading this post

[edit] I guess I kind of went... way off-topic on this one. I feel like I have more to say, but I've already rambled enough. Eh, consider this venting, I guess. Just another old man screaming at... virtual clouds.