Free speech

The issue of free speech always kicks up huge disagreements. Crooked Timber's Chris Bertram and Harry Brighouse (in comments) recently defended the idea - in some sense - that speech restrictions might be justifiable aim of government. The comments section there, as it always is anywhere, is hugely complicated by the fact that numerous issues get rolled into one. Here are three I can think of:

1) Whether some forms of speech are morally more reprehensible than others.
2) Whether government could ever conceivably justifiably intefere with speech.
3) Whether actual governments could ever realistically interfere with speech effectively.

One can hold various combinations of views on these questions, and no doubt there are further questions still that I've missed out.

For what it's worth, it seems obvious to me that the answer to (1) is that they are - speech can cause severe harm, and severe harm is morally bad. The answer to (2) also seems like a yes to me - I don't see why governments couldn't pursue morally right aims, if they can do so effectively. (3) is the tricky one; I incline towards thinking that governments are ineffective at this task. But I don't have much knowledge of this; political scientists are no doubt better qualified than me to tell us what the answer is.

That's one point I wanted to make. The other I'll take up in a seperate post.