Indeed, free speech is all about competition in the marketplace of ideas. That’s really a traditionally conservative idea, isn’t it? Competition in marketplaces is a Republican ideal.

But here again lately, we find Republicans and other right wingers behaving as if they’ve forgotten what their principles are.

People in the U.S. have the freedom, the uncontested freedom, to put forth their ideas and work to persuade others without government interference.

Hell, you can tell a police officer to go fuck himself as you flip him the bird, and that’s legal as long as it’s not accompanied by contextual threats of violence.

But just because you can’t be put in jail for that doesn’t mean that a potential employer seeing a video couldn’t use it to decide whether or not you’d make a valuable employee who possesses good judgment.

That’s an argument conservative should be able to relate to, because they generally don’t like it when people flip cops off.

The same principle applies in other contexts. That should not be so hard to understand.