The cancel-culture wars have revealed a lot of ironies and dilemmas. Here is one question that conservatives need to think harder about: Should we defend free speech and free thought as good things in themselves, regardless of their content, or should we focus our energies on defending our own substantive vision of the good?
Recall the big debate between populist conservatives and classical-liberal conservatives that was generated by Sohrab Ahmari’s argument with David French about a public library hosting “drag queen story hour.” The notion of a content-neutral defense of speech was a big battleground of that debate. Echoes of a similar debate can be found in the arguments leveled at legal originalists by “common-good” theories of constitutional interpretation, although how we read legal texts raises somewhat distinct questions from how we make more-general arguments about the good society. A component of the current debate about Big Tech and Internet free speech is also about the proper place of content-neutral values as well.
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