American freedom of expression is something I tend to take for granted, having never experienced anything less. As a naturally outspoken and highly opinionated person, I have always accepted without much thought my right to speak my mind and protest the cropped puffer vest. The closest I’ve come to having my expression restricted was my time in school before university: I attended a Pre-K-12 private Christian school with Mennonite affiliations and a deeply conservative value system, none of which were particularly appealing to me. I was not able to say what I believed in classes, challenge my teachers even when they were blatantly wrong, or wear things that made me happy. This experience taught me a lot about the value of freedom of expression by showing me a version of my life without it; since then I’ve been more outspoken and judgmental than ever, and my protected right to be obnoxiously anti-anything is extremely important to my sense of self.

A Marketplace of Ideas

The first of the eight values of freedom of expression that resonates with me is the marketplace of ideas. I love to shop, whether that be for clothing, the lowest price for a hotel, or the best idea. An open marketplace of ideas is so important for society because it establishes a tradition for shopping for the best ideas rather than buying into the same old thing simply because it’s convenient or it’s what you parents bought and you have an untested brand loyalty. A marketplace of ideas allows us to find truths with which we personally identify as well as discover objective truths. There’s no guarantee that people will go to the marketplace, buy anything, or even look at anything new. Similarly, there will certainly be some suspicious characters peddling homespun conspiracy theories that most of us will wisely ignore. These are aspects of a truly free marketplace and marks of a system that makes space for everyone to bring their ideas.

Individual Self-Fulfillment

The most important value to me is individual self-fulfillment, which is exceptionally important to us as thinking, feeling entities for what I think are obvious reasons—I doubt anyone would claim to have no interest in self-fulfillment, especially in this country, where individualism runs hotter and more consistently than the shower in my apartment. This idea is very closely tied to the whole pursuit of happiness thing, I think, which is an important allowance to make for a society that you expect to remain functional for any extended period of time. I know that in my case if I don’t get enough time to do the things that make me happy and better myself, I become quite depressed, inhibiting my ability to do all the societally expected things that I hate doing. The phenomenon brings to mind a portion of Blaise Pascal’s Pensées wherein he posits that hobbies and divertissements serve only as futile distractions from our constant human misery. This is the case for a whole lot of people and, in this way, I believe that the protection of our ability to pursue happiness and fulfillment is both a basic human right and a necessary feature of any functional government. If religion be our opiate, maybe our silly little divertissements are the “look over there” that keeps us running.

Promote Tolerance

The last value of freedom of expression that I wanted to touch on is the promotion of tolerance. This is a hot topic right now with a host of issues that complicate the matter: hate speech and other manifestations of intolerance are born of various -isms, -phobias, and misogyny, making it a difficult thing to address on its own. Call it woke, call it empathy and respect, but I try to be very conscious of how my words affect others and make verbal decisions accordingly. I recognize the blatant hypocrisy of wanting to be able to say what I want but not wanting the same for my racist, homophobic high school classmates. This feeling of mine is based my conviction that we should be kind to and understanding of all people. I’ve experienced my share of hate speech and the result is not something that anyone should ever have to feel, so I do wish on some level that behavior of this kind were legally reprehensible. The sense of helplessness when someone calls you a slur in front of your friends—even doubling down on it when reproached—and you have no recourse is infuriating.

The idea that the allowance of hate speech fosters tolerance is difficult to accept. While I understand the argument and see merits in this system of learned tolerance through the demonstration of intolerance, it still doesn’t feel like enough. Sometimes it feels as though this country would rather protect an antiquated belief system than its people. Again, I understand the argument and know the danger of altering things now, but we’ve been wrong before, and I believe there’s a better way when it comes to many of the social issues we’re dealing with today.