The best way to preserve cherished rights is to make sure they also protect those we find most repellent.
If you support the rights of Nazis to march in Skokie, however appalling that might be, you understand what the First Amendment is all about. If you approve of shutting down speech you don't like, including Nazis marching in Jewish suburbs, your view of speech essentially boils down to "for me but not thee."
An "absolutist" position in defense of free speech is the only tenable position because anything less ultimately becomes no defense at all; since it is impossible to split hairs over what can and can't be said it becomes necessary to err in favor of government letting just about everything be said.
Along these lines, a thought experiment: What if the Republican governor of a conservative state openly declared a desire to use the powers of his office and the public agencies under it to harass and even bankrupt any organization that advocated positions he disagreed with, such as a legal right to abortion, same-sex marriage, or abolition of capital punishment?
What would the liberal reaction to such an effort be?
If you believed in the First Amendment and the right of free speech it guarantees, you would be appalled, regardless of what position you took on abortion, same-sex marriage or capital punishment. If, on the other hand, you applauded such actions, you might get invited to participate in the next neo-Nazi goosestep in jackboots parade.
Commitment to freedom of speech comes with an obligation to support any group whose speech the state is attempting to suppress for fear that it will be our speech that gets suppressed next.
Thus we come to the demagogic governor of
