Does Free Speech Really Matter?

Free speech is indispensable to our prosperity. Allow me to make the case through a side door, and then to expand from there. Imagine that you were creative and had a product or service to sell to the public; however, you were not allowed to talk about it. What would become of the idea? Now ask ourselves, how many of America’s corporations, large and small, had their beginnings in a college dorm room, a basement or a garage? 
When an idea is right, it takes off, because, in a free society, we are free to talk, to write, to advertise, and to get the word out. The first thing you know, the idea has become a major industry employing countless people and providing a service to untold numbers of others. Without the ability to promote, commerce would be stifled, people would not have the concomitant employment, and society at large would have to do without that product or service.
That is the economic side; now, what about the political argument for free speech? In nations without free speech, people must bite their tongues, must keep their thoughts to themselves. What is the consequence of that? The people have to endure non-responsive government because the government doesn’t seek their input, nor do they desire it. Even if that nation holds elections, people are uninformed, and thus are unable to vote for the candidates who would serve them the best.
Why am I writing this? This is America. Everybody already knows this stuff; everybody fully realizes the value of free speech, right? After all, it is the first item in our Constitution’s Bill of Rights!  So again, why write this? Here is why:  we have people, including politicians now telling the public, if you don’t agree with what someone is saying, make such an uproar that the person is disinvited to express him/herself.
The only way that someone would get away with making such an un-American statement is if those they are speaking to don’t realize that this is anti-American, and is destructive of the very foundation of their country, and their individual lives.
But, because we are sovereign, WE decide the direction of our nation. To make our best decisions, however, we need to hear all sides of any argument.    
Yet this is what is happening on America’s campuses today. Clearly, those running many of our institutions of higher learning today are afraid for the students to hear ideas the faculty doesn’t agree with, out of fear they might choose contrary ideas.
A noted English philosopher who strove for social justice and women’s suffrage, John Stuart Mill, was emphatic in his support for free speech, saying,  “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion…Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.” (goodreads.com )
Is free speech indispensable to us? Emphatically Yes.  Further, to prevent the erosion of our rights, we must know them and teach our children.
Art Hall