“If Liberty Means Anything at All, It Means the Right to Tell People What They Do Not Want to Hear”
George Orwell said that.
Everybody knows that the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution grants Americans freedom of speech. It states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press…” This means that in a free society, people must be allowed to criticize the government and express what they think and believe.
The Supreme Court has written that the right to freedom of expression is “the matrix, the indispensable condition of nearly every other form of freedom.” Free speech means that the government cannot censor you. What it doesn’t mean is that anyone else has to listen to you. In other words: Free speech doesn’t equal mandatory listening. Like one commenter put it: People are free to say bullshit and I’m free to not listen to them.