Thus, the question of whether freedom of speech should be limited is going to be explored mainly in the area of political and politics-related ideas, especially as this is the most controversial sphere of this freedom where questions like “should hate speech be protected?” are brought up. It important to note that freedom of speech is in fact limited to prevent threats, false alarms, and objectively harmful ideas. To answer the question, freedom of speech should have no boundaries, at least not in terms of political content. Freedom of speech should be absolute because any speech control jeopardizes all public discourse, it takes away the opportunity to debate and disapprove polemical ideas, and it attacks the people who are just exploring these ideas. Freedom of speech is the base of democracy and to limit it is to vanquish its very foundations.

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    Freedom of speech should be absolute because to censor hate speech or any unpopular speech endangers all public discourse. The topic of the protection of hate speech is being widely discussed since the public recently became aware of white-supremacists like Richard Spencer sharing what most consider neo-Nazi ideas. A vast number of people have asked for white-supremacists and inflammatory ideas to be censored as they offend groups of people and may inspire destructive actions against them. Although the majority of people share rightfully-founded disapproval and disgust for hate speech, it is impossible to censor it without compromising all speech. The argument to censor hate speech is that it harms certain groups of people and inspires violence or represents a danger to society. However, by compromising to these terms, the government is given the leeway to determine when speech can constitute a danger or inspire violence. This risks the foundations of free speech as in that case the government could censor the people’s protests, all criticism to government, pro-choice campaigns, a leftist party, or any sane idea by arguing it can turn into violence. It also takes away the people’s right to condemn an idea or challenge the government as it was the case with Apartheid censorship. This, of course, would jeopardize the people’s freedom and become a threat to any democracy.  It is worth noting that free speech is limited but not to the extent some people push for, as it is the case with the example of Brandenburg v. Ohio. In 1964, in the United States, a Ku Klux Klan leader by the name of Clarence Brandenburg organized a KKK rally where he and other members burned a cross, made racist and anti-Semitic speeches, among other things which were televised, which he was convicted for. During the appeal, the Supreme Court held that the government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless that speech is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action." (Oyez, 2019) This proves that freedom of speech is regulated to protect any immediate harm to the people or the government but this clear distinction is what protects the people’s rights from any form of totalitarianism.

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    Limiting freedom of speech eliminates the possibility to debate, question, and intellectually challenge ideas. To address this point, it is fair to use the scenario of neo-Nazis and white supremacists like Richard Spencer and Milo Yiannopoulos. People have seen these unpopular provocateurs made comments like “Martin Luther King Jr., a fraud and degenerate in his life [...]”. (Wysong, 2018). However, by taking these views out of the conversation the people will not be able to intellectually challenge them and destroy them with arguments. If hate speech is banned, it will not diminish the force this type of ideas have but actually sustain them. If people do not have access to hate speech they won’t have access to the damnation and disapproval of said hate speech as they might not face the reality of the prejudicial nature of this kind of offensive remarks. In the words of Spiked editor, Brendan O’Neill: “The only way to challenge prejudice is to confront it head-on in the public realm and destroy it with argument and reason”. (O’Neill, 2017). What this means is that hate speech strengthens itself when censored as these provocateurs use the censorship to present themselves as victims and not face the logical and reasonable flaws of their ideas. 

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     A counter-argument presented to most freedom of speech absolutists is the problem with the Overton window and the paradox of tolerance. The Overton window is the range of ideas tolerated in public discourse and their viability based on the range of their classification.  The tolerance paradox is that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. The Overton window is usually applied to hate speech to classify it as radical and unthinkable within the degree of acceptance of ideas that should be banned from public discourse. This follows Noam Chomsky’s remarks in The Common Good: “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum—even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.” (Chomsky 43). However, both Karl Popper and John Rawls previously gave this idea a different perspective. Popper argued, "In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance." (Popper, 1945). However, Popper made clear that he did not mean the expression of intolerant words and ideas to not be tolerated, but the ones who must not be tolerated are those who wish to silence discussion and debate. Rawls reinforced this idea by arguing that society must tolerate the intolerant until it has no reason to do so and that is, when it represents a real immediate danger to society and when the speech is extreme enough that by banning it there is no risk of banning the speech of the majority of people. This point also proves the fact that it is better to battle ideas and destroy the intolerant inside the public and civil discourse where the public can learn to discern acceptable from radical and condemn hate speech.

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    Freedom of speech should be absolute in the range of ideas it covers because to restrict people from exploring all ideas is to strengthen the censored ideas. This point is very similar to the previous one as the idea of censorship as a double-edged sword is the same. However, the focus on this argument is how restraint, whether prior or subsequent, can be a threat to tolerant and intolerant ideas and how censorship can, in fact, open and promote the discussion for a certain topic. In past history in the US and Europe, governments saw how by censoring Fascism, Communism, and other political ideas, they caused the opposite intended effect: promoting them instead of restricting them. This is the case with neo-Nazis once again but this situation has repeated itself many times in history: a government decides to censor hate speech or political speech they disagree with, which makes people who do not believe on the censored idea but were actually just exploring it to be drawn towards this idea. This happens not for the idea itself, but the restraint on the idea and this can be observed in modern society. Attention, discussion, and support are drawn in favor of intolerant and otherwise unpopular ideas like white-supremacy or anarchy, not for the nature of the content of the ideas itself but for the disapproval of the censorship on them. This is critical as on many occasions the supporters of radical discourse confuse their disapproval for the restraint with the content of the discourse and end up supporting ideas they would otherwise not follow if they had been allowed to be part of the conversation. The problem with prior restraint is also similar to the mentioned censorship because it is possible to limit freedom of speech in face of provoked imminent danger but allowing it to be censored prior to its publication and communication allows governments to ban content the people might or might not approve and this will endanger democracy without people even knowing it. In addition, prior restraint also makes the restraint the topic of the conversation, instead of the content, which can have the mentioned effects where hateful ideas become attractive for their suppression. 

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    In conclusion, freedom of speech should not be limited further than it already is. Freedom of speech should be absolute in the variety of the ideas it covers but not on its effects. If the people allow for prejudicial ideas or a portion of the ideas they do not agree with to be censored, they will jeopardize all freedom of speech. This means that to censor hate speech and intolerant ideas is more detrimental to society than the content of the ideas itself. The people cannot allow leeway for the governments to decide what speech is harmful and what speech should be censored as it is too much power for a government to have. This power can then be used against the positive ideas of the people. This proves that the risk of losing democracy to censorship far outweighs the risk that heinous ideas pose to society. Also, the people should confront and intellectually destroy these ideas with argument and reason within the public discourse thereby impeding the hateful to fuel from its suppression. It is important to understand that the restraint to ideas is more powerful than the ideas itself. The true threat inside the public realm is to tolerate those who silence ideas and promote licensed speech. Licensed speech compromises the freedom of all by attacking the freedom of the few, which means that limiting freedom of speech goes against the very foundations of itself. Free speech is the right that protects our votes, our convictions, our faith, and our ideas. By upholding freedom of speech as the wide fundamental right it is, the people will be able to protect themselves from authoritarianism and the tyranny of ideas. To tolerate the intolerant is the small price society has to pay to preserve all of their freedoms.