Ronald Reagan once stated, "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free."  One of the most important freedoms we have is the freedom of speech.  We see this belief articulated in our Bill of Rights.  The First Amendment states, "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech."  Today we have a movement attempting to silence conflicting point of views.  Individuals who attempt to silence opposing viewpoints are at odds with the underlying principle behind the First Amendment.  In a republic, an open forum for ideas allows the best ideas to float to the top. 

If individuals are not able to express their views freely, their strongly held views do not simply subside.  As constant attention is given to the divisions in America and to the intolerance of opposing viewpoints, many are looking to find what may be the underlying causes.  In his article "A Broken Culture," Erick Erickson describes how, in our current society, we build our own "tribes" by isolating and filtering our lives through handpicking our community on social media.  Technology has already led to the isolation of the individual.  Through the web, one can simply view only accounts that reaffirm his worldview.  Information has never been more accessible, but aspects of our culture are undermining the academic curiosity this technology could bring.

The society we live in today has some striking resemblances to the society described in Fahrenheit 451.  Ray Bradbury describes an America where books must be destroyed, discourse must be shallow, and ideas contrary to the status quo must be silenced.  Currently, while books are not being literally destroyed, the historical foundations of this country are being attacked and dismissed as outdated.  Instead of looking into the past to find heroes to emulate, the current trend is to mock and attack any historical figure influential in American history.  Apparently, we are too enlightened today to learn anything from Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence because he owned slaves.  Historical figures are flawed because they, like us, are human.  Instead of studying these figures with a critical eye, they and their accomplishments must be removed from our consciousness.  Despite the complexity of the subject matter, our current cable news shows refuse to dedicate time to the major problems that plague society today.  An hour-long interview with William Buckley and the leading academic minds would not fit into any cable programming today.  Our politically correct culture rejects any defense of the values of yesterday. 

Freedom of speech is essential for our experiment in republicanism.

A pretense to our form of government was the free-market system argued by Adam Smith, in which the best products and business are allowed to thrive or fail on their own merit.  Our system of government also enshrined this principle in our political system.  Protections for a public forum to exchange diverse ideas provide not only an arena to evaluate which ideas are most appropriate for implementation, but also a mechanism for individuals attempting to remedy their perceived ills of the nation.  When individuals are placed in echo chambers and never entertain their political opposition, a chasm is created that may be unbreachable.

Freedom of speech should not be a partisan issue.  The liberal platform of openness to new ideas has all but been destroyed.  Conservatives must champion freedom of speech in the public forum – not to score political victories, but to save the free society that previous generations fought to protect.