When pressed for a defense of free speech--and it must be noted that there is a difference between taking advantage of a culture's alleged support of freedom of speech for manipulative purposes and wholeheartedly endorsing the American conception of freedom of speech--supporters will often claim that the goal of free speech is to promote the discovery of truth. Whether or not this is the actual purpose, it does not alter the fact that a right to freedom of speech is a contradiction in terms, a logical impossibility (with one exception depending on the definition, which will be addressed below).
No one has a right to believe in anything that is not both true and provable. If there are no objective moral values, then no one has a right to anything at all, meaning no one can have a right to freedom of belief, speech, or behavior; if there are objective moral values, then no one has a right to believe, say, or do whatever they want, since some beliefs and actions are immoral and thus should not be defended. People can therefore only be morally "free" to express verbal support for ideas that are both true and verifiable.
Far from aiding the public's search for truth, encouraging freedom of speech (unless one strictly defines it as the social/legal freedom to say anything that is not irrational or immoral) inevitably makes it more difficult for many actual truth seekers to sort through the legions of asinine claims that are so prevalent in human civilizations. This usual consequence aside, how many people who believe in freedom of speech only want the truth to be elevated? Almost all models of free speech are not aimed at truth, but at
the gratification of subjective desires to escape social judgment on
grounds of reason and morality.
Tolerance of intellectual mediocrity and failure, not the celebration of truth, is the aim of many who regard freedom of speech as some inherent human right. If this were not the case, no one would protect those who try to defend miscellaneous errors by claiming that they have a supposed "right" to believe/say what they wish. Only those who are in the right can have a right to speak their mind, along with those who sincerely seek after truths they have yet to discover as long as they do not promote any fallacies or errors in the process.
It is not those who treat irrational people in a brutal and predatory way who need to be silenced, but those who are irrational. There those who mistakenly conclude that this stance against freedom of speech entails the support of legal penalties for verbalizing erroneous beliefs. This does not follow, and the charge is nothing but a straw man of the anti-tolerance position. The person who cares about truth will not seek to give stupidity a platform, but they will not call for legal penalties for the mere support of errors when this support is separated from actual criminal speech (slander, perjury, and so on). This distinction does not serve as a shield for proponents of freedom of speech: irrespective of how strongly a person feels about free speech, it is impossible for there to be such a thing as a right for members the public to affirm whatever ideologies they prefer.
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