A persistent problem for liberals is that people continually do things that they are not meant to be free to do. People are not free to take drugs, yet many take drugs; people are not free to steal, yet many are thieves and people are not allowed to use certain words but those words continue to be heard.

Part of the problem is that there are two meanings of the word free that are being combined.

The first is when people are physically prevented from doing something. I can shut you up by gagging you, handcuffing you and throwing you in a jail cell.

The second is being unable to make a free choice because you are threatened with a form of punishment. I can shut you up by threatening to punch you if you say something.

In most debates about free speech people are talking about the second version of freedom, the threat of punishment, rather than the first;.

In general, everyone who claims to be in favour of free speech says that the government should not make laws that would allow for people to be locked up for the things that they say. They believe that the threat of jail time is not a legitimate threat to be used against someone for speaking. State violence is not permitted to be used against people for the things they say.

Many would also argue that the state not only has a duty to not use violence but also must protect people from violence from their fellow citizens. It is not enough to not torture dissidents, they must also be protected from pro-regime mobs.

So largely there is a lot of agreement that people should not face violence for the things they say.

Despite this agreement for my whole life there have been interminable, never-ending, never-resolving debates about what free speech means and what the limits are. In my experience the reason for this is that there are several tensions in the liberal conception of free speech that are very rarely made reference to:

• The tension between freedom of speech and other liberal freedoms, such as freedom of association. Being ostracised and exiled is a threat that many people feel quite strongly and can prevent them from saying what they want. Another example might be freedom of contract, one might not say something they believed because of the threat of losing their jobs.
• The tension between freedom of speech and property rights. In order for freedom of speech to be meaningful there must be somewhere for you to stand while you say something. If all property is fully controlled by people who disagree with you then you can be shut up simply by them enforcing their property rights.
• The tension between freedom of speech and freedom of speech. One can use speech to bully, ridicule and publicly condemn, all of which can act as a threat to shut people up or as libel and incitements to violence.

In all of these questions the debate is about what are the legitimate ways to respond to people saying things you dislike and which ‘freedoms’ are the most important. For example, one can think it is fair enough for people to shun people whose views they dislike but also be against someone losing their job for being rude.

In this example, freedom of association is seen as more important than freedom of speech but freedom of contract is less important. A liberal in this situation would support government restrictions on employment law in order to promote freedom of speech.

The debate about freedom of speech is usually a contest about which freedoms should trump other freedoms and what sanctions are legitimate to use. As such it involves a thicker debate about moral philosophy than liberals ordinarily present.

So if everyone could stop pretending that there is some neutral non-normative idea of free speech that everyone shares I would really appreciate it.