If discourse is to be a moral foundation for political decision-making, it should have open-architecture and be inclusive and diverse.
Free speech seems necessary to enable and make fluid the decentralized, open-architecture dynamics of democratic capitalism. With power widely dispersed in such systems, its mobilization on any scale for collective achievement requires communication, trust building and collaboration among different holders of power. Free speech maximizes the range of possible collaborations in such systems. Censorship and restriction of speech would suboptimize outcomes.
I want to share with you a recent commentary by Professor Jonathan Zimmerman, which appeared in the Wall Street Journal, on the importance of free speech and the current efforts in the U.S. to throttle diversity in community conversations.