Greg Easterbrook in the WSJ comments.
When the Bill of Rights was enacted, the First Amendment was construed mainly to shield speakers from imprisonment for antigovernment views. That expression could have other costs–denunciation, ostracism, loss of employment–was assumed. Many of the original patriots took enormous risks in the exercise of speech, Patrick Henry being an obvious example. William Blackstone, the English legal theorist closely read by the Framers, argued that the essence of free speech was forbidding prior restraint: Anyone should be able to say anything, but then must live with the aftermath. A citizen should possess “an undoubted right to lay what sentiments he pleases before the public,” Blackstone wrote in his “Commentaries”–which James Madison consulted often while working on drafts of the First Amendment wording–but “must take the consequences” for any reaction.
The reaction to free speech, Madison thought, would be part of the mechanism by which society sifted out beliefs. Protected by Madison’s amendment, the Ku Klux Klan can spew whatever repugnant drivel its wishes. Society, in turn, shuns KKK members for the repugnant people their free speech exposes them to be. No one expects the KKK to speak without a price; its price is ostracism. Why should repugnant speech on foreign policy or terrorism be any different?
Free speech means the government can’t stop you from saying things.
Free speech does not mean that folks cannot get angry at what you say, denounce you for what you say, or ask that you get fired if you are in a public position.
Indeed, such reactions are, themselves, part of free speech.
(Via InstaPundit)