If you expect your right to say “fuck the police” or wear a shirt emblazoned with the same, you can’t go around saying the law should keep someone from wearing a swastika. BOTH are protected by the right to free speech, as much as you and much of the left don’t want to admit it.
I stand for the PRINCIPLE of free speech rather than wheeling it out to defend speech I like but then pretending like it doesn’t exist to suppress speech I don’t.
In order to preempt some of the more predictable responses to this, no, private companies cannot violate your right to free speech - only the government can. So if the book company in the OP decides to stop selling some books, I would not consider it to be violating free speech. But I think the conversation has strayed from that specific instance at this point.
Free speech DOES extend to hatred, though.
Did y’all forget the ACLU once defended the National Socialist Party of America’s right to free speech?
If you expect your right to say “fuck the police” or wear a shirt emblazoned with the same, you can’t go around saying the law should keep someone from wearing a swastika. BOTH are protected by the right to free speech, as much as you and much of the left don’t want to admit it.
I stand for the PRINCIPLE of free speech rather than wheeling it out to defend speech I like but then pretending like it doesn’t exist to suppress speech I don’t.
In order to preempt some of the more predictable responses to this, no, private companies cannot violate your right to free speech - only the government can. So if the book company in the OP decides to stop selling some books, I would not consider it to be violating free speech. But I think the conversation has strayed from that specific instance at this point.