I've been thinking about how the Constitution has just not worked very well, and I think one of the easy things to look at is the bill of rights- specifically 'free speech'.

Some folks will happily tell you the founding fathers were deists, or the more conspiratorial will suggest freemasonry.  This should not bother us too much, because, if all else fails, we could just look at the Constitution as a sort of illegal subversion.  I know many of us still kind of like it because nostalgia- i.e. the non-ideology of conservatism in which we just want to keep the stuff around that we grew up with, despite how often the things we grew up with were already tainted with leftism and/or fiddled with to not work as we expect traditional things to do.

But, whatever- America was a Christian nation and, at one point, the Supreme court generally left the states alone and focused on keeping the federal government true to the Constitution rather than hack the will of the people as expressed via state law.

Additionally, voters were property owners.  Sure, other rules applied, but for bill of rights type purposes- well, the only rational way to handle any kind of 'right' is via property right.

How did this play out for 'free speech'?  

The overwhelmingly Christian population- via state and local legislatures- put anti-blasphemy and anti-obscenity laws on the books.  These were not terrible restrictions on an unalloyed right.  No, they were the rather obvious flip side to freedom of speech.  We have the freedom of speech, but everyone else has the freedom not to hear- especially if they actually take the time to listen, figure out the speaker is a jerk, and head for the door.  In a state where only property owners vote, the laws restricting speech simply remove the nonsense that the property owners don't want to hear from being shouted out around their property.  

In other words, in this formerly Christian nation, Christian property owners voted- and, by and large- modulated free speech into what could probably be called productive speech.  I'm sure much nonsense was still spoken, but in terms of the gestalt of what was spoken it was likely much better than what I'll describe below.

We have had the 'free speech' thing reinterpreted to be anyone can say anything anywhere- obviously violating property rights and making the creation of true communities more and more difficult.  Of course, the destruction of the community involves many more things- in older days you'd have the neighborhoods where people were trying to behave themselves, and then you'd have red light districts or whatever- this led to people noticing that they didn't want the bad ideas in their neighborhoods.  Perhaps especially if they were tempted enough to actually visit these districts- the obviously poor outcomes were blatant- not hidden two doors down in so many neighborhoods now.

But then we went into 'free speech' for people who were advocating for silencing other people. And, even at this late date of empire, we should have been smart enough to shut this down.  Using free speech to say this other person shouldn't have free speech?  Seems like they violate their argument by arguing it.  But these people are not afraid of hypocrisy.

Now we have forced speech.  It's Pride month.  If you are not happy with Pride and you are lucky, then maybe no one will notice.  Maybe you can just be silent.  But if you have any level of renown, chances are high your refusal to talk or participate in some way will be noticed, and they will come out to punish you.

If 'speech' is any indicator, LGBT etc... will soon become only T.  I've already seen the suggestion that gay and lesbian are outre and now we should call them same gender loving- or SGL.  Meanwhile the medical industrial complex can look forward to approximately seven million dollars- possibly more since devious minds come up with ever more procedures.  I can't call them treatments, since the suicide rates (not to mention the effects of these procedures) clearly cast them out of any notion that rises to the surface when hearing the word 'health' or 'care'.

Without the framework the Christian property owners provided, 'free speech' is incoherent.  Speech likely should be as free as possible for purposes of iteration- same with most 'freedoms'.  Within certain parameters, freedom translates in to the chance to try again, to iterate until we solve whatever problem we have.  

But after watching these things play out, and seeing how 'free speech' has been used to prop up demagogues in other countries, I can see why the Russians, Chinese, and many other nations just look at us like we are stupid when we talk about it.