If you are rich, have the grace God gave a doorknob, and STFU.
So I'm going to write something here that has been stuck in my head for nearly a year and a half, or as long as it's been since the last full-time gig. (The fact that I'm going to write this on my dormant sports blog, rather than my business one, tells you all you need to know about the relative free speech of people looking for work.)
Depending on who you ask, that gig ended with a coding error or management intransigence in the face of a failing practice, and two things can be true at the same time.
Why has this been in my mind, but not on paper, for so long? Short answer: an NDA and continuing desire to have COBRA coverage. Longer answer: cowardice and shame and persistent, self-destructive doubt. When an employer tells you that your words can never be seen (and you are, well, a writer) for reasons that have nothing to do with math, the simplest reasons must be that you are venal, or dumb, or maybe both. Sprinkle in some long-term job search on top of that, and you get a guy that's not getting over it. And not getting over it is... what happens when you self-censor.
I have never, in my professional career, self-censored more than I did while working for an organization whose purpose is to defend free speech. They do this by fighting against compelling speech for people who might not want to redress historical issues involving race and economic class, and by treating the idea that spending money is free speech, because if someone stops you from saying something with your money, that's censorship. There are any number of rhetorical tricks for all of this, but at its core, it's free speech so long as it gives the overwhelming advantage to those who want to believe that history is where you find all of the wisdom, and that taking money from people who want to go back to the Great Old Days where ideas about race and gender and identity (always, natch, of others) is just the hurly burly of the Marketplace Of Ideas.
This absolutism only extends to people who work in the public sector, of course, because the right of the people with money is sacrosanct and yay libertarianism. Fire off letters threatening colleges that no one ever heard of? Your courage and nobility astounds. Note that the Supreme Court is incredibly corrupt and perpetuates the perpetually worsening climate for free speech by treating, well, money as the only speech that matters? You sound partisan, and thereby corrupt, unlike we, the proud eunuchs of free speech who inevitably seem more comfortable hanging out with the rich asshats with the Nazi memorabilia.
A sad little fact you learn from start-ups: you are your money. Take it from stupid or short-sighted people, and you become that. Take it from people with bad taste in collectibles and worse ones in opinions, and the stink is now yours. If all of your customers are assholes, they are buying from one.
And the funny thing about people who need to tell you to presume that they are all of good will, regardless of their actions?
They wind up proving that your presumption of good will, which was always difficult to manage because reality for reality's sake is something of a baseline for cognitive thought?
Was never correct, and proven by actions.
For the record? I'm not sure I'd hire me, either. I have lots of ideas and will make you money, but there's a lot more to life than having good ideas and money, especially if you are super invested in never changing your mind about anything, well, important. Or you find the guys with the Nazi gear fun to hang out with. It must be exhausting to manage me, especially if integrity isn't your jam (and integrity is a nasty little vice, in that it is never very good about obeying the NDA).
So, free speech?
No one *really* believes in it. Mostly because when you speak to people who will never change their minds about anything, it's all take and no give. And that's not free speech, that's sado-masochism.
In the waning days of World War 2, SS officers would look to surrender to the Americans, because survival. Eisenhower, in a potent act of understanding, would refuse to return the courtesy of a military salute. To him, these men were not soldiers; they were members of a criminal organization engaging in dress-up. The salute was wrong to return, and boy howdy, did those SS officers really hate not getting it returned. Maybe not so much as the nooses that awaited them as war criminals, but similar.
History proves Eisenhower was right to do this. Censoring criminality means you are not aiding criminality. When we refuse to hear the (repetitive, insane, unproductive, dispiriting, etc.) speech of proven bad actors, we are restricting their free speech, and we're doing so for *excellent* reasons.
To the free speech absolutist, this means you are shutting down information and presuming omniscience, as if continuing to hear the bad information could hold no impact. Humans, inevitably, don't work this way. There's music you like and music you hate, and insisting that you listen to the music you hate until you like it is, well, sado-masochism again.
So, no, I don't really believe in free speech anymore. I used to. Then I worked for people who showed me that no one really does, all while holding themselves above all of those partisan scoundrels. Because when one side has to give up its favorite slurs when the other side is in power, it has to be equally as bad as when the other side has to give up autonomy over its body when the sides swap. (No one does both-sideism better than someone who has to tell you how much more free speechier than thou they are.)
What I do believe is in the open exchange of ideas, presuming it's with those of good faith. Which money, privilege and power inevitably corrupts, because t'was ever thus, and good faith goes away constantly, because we humans tend to prioritize our kin over someone else's. We tend to presume that the people in our world with these attributes must have gotten or kept them from some positive factor, and increasingly, well, no. Anyone who has ever made a great fortune probably did it by taking advantage of someone else, especially in certain consumer categories that I don't really need to name, because it's pretty obvious when an enterprise is parasitic. (Funny thing about that? I've worked for obvious parasites in gambling, finance and other hustles, and it felt better than being near the Nazi fans. Just didn't set off my Evil Is Nigh detector.)
Or, shorter?
Free speech for the poor, because they need it.
Censorship for the wealthy, because they'll impose it on everyone else if you don't.
Money is not speech; money is power.
And power corrupts, every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
And the only way to call out corruption is... free speech.
Even if it's calling for censorship of the corrupt.
And if you are rich, and don't enjoy being told to STFU?
Go pay someone to listen to you bitch about how unfair the world is.
