The Shifting Boundaries of Free Speech

So no society tolerates every imaginable form of speech; there are always boundaries. What’s disorienting about American society today is how quickly the boundaries are shifting. Beliefs that were almost universal less than 20 years ago—and are held by around 40 percent of the American people now—are deemed utterly beyond the pale. It’s hard not to suspect that some of the people most devoted to policing those boundaries are pouncing prosecutorially on views that they themselves held not that long ago. (The convert’s zeal.)

Alan Jacobs
“The Value of Disagreement”
The American Conservative
July 9, 2015