I’ve come to expect that Bret Stephens will make sloppy arguments but I wish the Seattle Times had the wisdom to not publish them. His examples of “the left” include major corporations like Meta, “the New York publishing industry,” and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then quotes Rosa Luxemburg, an actual leftist, as his example of a good defense of free speech. What’s most absurd, though, is that Stephens conflates arguing against bad ideas with the government censoring them. Free speech does not mean everybody agrees with you, it means the government does not have the right to restrain or punish your speech.
Josh Cerretti, Bellingham
