NICK GILLESPIE: The Main Casualty of Canceled Trump Rally Is The *Idea* of Free Speech.

At the same time that at least some of Trump’s followers are cretinous goons, there’s an equally problematic counter-dynamic at work as well: The anti-free-speech mentality that’s extremely pervasive throughout the American left that is summed by the slogan of a prominent Bernie Sanders supporter who helped organize the anti-Trump show in Chicago: “Everyone, get your tickets to this. We’re all going in!!!! ‪#‎SHUTITDOWN‬.”

Shut it down! How cool is that? It’s just like a college campus, where speakers aren’t challenged on unpopular viewpoints but simply disinvited or shouted down to a degree that a thug’s veto prevails.

Greg Lukianoff, head honcho at The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), has articulated that, for some years now, we haven’t been debating about the conditions under which free speech might be allowed. Far more troubling, we are instead debating whether the idea of free speech can even be justified anymore. On both the left and the right (which has its own version of political correctness and has rarely been slow to try and stifle voices with which it disagrees), most people are pushing for what Lukianoff says is “freedom from speech.”

Public debate, it seems, is no longer a means by which to search for truth, knowledge, and common ground, but only a venue for speech that expresses unthinking solidarity with whatever you already believe.

Trump and his campaign should categorically disown violence among the candidate’s followers. And anti-Trumpers need to learn the difference between protesting and eradicating speech in the public square.