Freedom of Speech in Peril

Some of these results are more disturbing than others, but the worst of them are quite disturbing.

Some of the shock value comes from the difference between the headline and the actual question asked. "Is supporting racists' free speech the same as holding racist views yourself?" is, strictly speaking, a logical question: you can determine the answer by building a truth table. Obviously they are not the same thing, and it would be deeply alarming to have a majority or near-majority come back saying that the clearly false proposition was true. What the survey actually asked was whether supporting racists' free speech was "as bad as" holding racist views. That's a different proposition. It's sad, in America, to see that so many people view defending freedom of speech to be actively immoral if the speech is bad. All the same, it's not a logical problem; it's a disagreement about whether freedom of speech is a good.

I think there's a similar issue with the question of whether "disrespectful" people do or don't deserve free speech rights. The actual question asks not about "disrespectful people," but about "people who don't respect others." That's not quite the same thing; you can be disrespectful in some senses without failing to respect the humanity of the person you're addressing disrespectfully. For example, you might be correcting them. Your disrespectful speech is then pointed at their actions, which are not necessarily respectable, and not their humanity. Someone who "does not respect others" is guilty of not respecting their humanity, which is a stronger offense. (For a Kantian, it is the basic moral offense.)

All that said, this points up a very deep division on a very basic and classically American right. That's a problem however you cut it.