Free Speech, and the Logic of Love

By Jean-Philippe Gabriel — frameworklove.com | September 5, 2024

It has always appeared to me that free speech must be absolute. Anything less is not freedom at all. At first, this seemed a matter of principle and logic—obvious, self-evident, and surely universal. I believed anyone should understand it, and that across political divisions, the rule of free expression would stand unquestioned. Surely everyone’s self-interest demanded the same: the right to speak freely without fear.

Yet experience has shown otherwise. I long ago separated myself from partisan affiliation, but some convictions remain deeply rooted. Free speech was one of them, inherited from the right and cherished as an article of faith. But reflection revealed a paradox: half the country does not see it that way. And coherence, the test of truth in my thought, forbids me from assuming that half the people are simply wrong while the other half is categorically right. Such division violates coherence, which demands that truth must make sense beyond faction.

Here lay the paradox: I could be right, and still wrong.

The Ideal of Free Speech

Upon reflection, I realized the absolute of free speech is indeed an ideal—but not in the way I once imagined. Its absolute cannot be grounded in law. Law, by nature, protects by restraining; it always governs through limits. The absolute of free speech exists only under love.

For only if we love can we have freedom, and freedom of speech. All else is law, censorship, and death.

This realization echoes an older philosophical lineage. Socrates, who drank the hemlock, defended not his life but his speech. In his refusal to recant, he lived out the paradox that speech cannot be free unless it risks death. John Milton, in Areopagitica (1644), insisted that truth must be tested in the open marketplace of ideas, not shielded by censorship. John Stuart Mill, in On Liberty (1859), offered perhaps the most powerful defense of free speech in modern philosophy, but even he conceded liberty ends where harm begins. The paradox reappears in every age: freedom exists only when risked, and yet law always seeks to manage the risk.

Law and Its Instinct to Protect

Law is not inherently hostile to freedom; indeed, it must align with love. But it does so from a different logic. Its instinct is protection—the primal reflex of order. Governments secure order first, then grant freedom. This instinct, codified in statutes and courts, becomes the visible scaffolding of society.

But nowhere is law’s instinct more complicated than with speech. Words wound. They can incite violence, destroy reputations, provoke mobs, or reduce a life to shame. To call speech a form of violence is not wrong—it acknowledges its power. And where there is violence, the law must intervene.

Thus law restrains speech to protect: banning incitement, punishing defamation, outlawing harassment. The instinct is consistent. Law restrains to secure. But love restrains differently.

The Difference Between Law and Love

Here lies the decisive distinction:

• Law censors outwardly; love censors inwardly.

• Law seeks to control the other; love seeks to control the self.

• Law restrains society; love restrains the soul.

This difference changes everything. Love, in restraining itself, grants absolute freedom to the other. This is the paradox of free speech under love: it is absolute because love refuses to contain the damage it may suffer. Love bears its own wounds rather than impose silence on its neighbor.

Thus free speech under love is not indulgence but surrender. It is the discipline of allowing another to speak—even to lie, insult, or injure—while bearing the burden of not returning hate for hate. Where law tallies debts, love erases them. Where law restrains with penalties, love restrains with forgiveness.

Freedom Under Law Is Never Free

This is why there is, strictly speaking, no such thing as free speech under law. Even its strongest defenders admit exceptions. Mill’s “harm principle” remains the classic example: liberty ends where direct harm begins. Modern democracies codify the same: incitement, threats, obscenity, exploitation. Different lists exist on left and right, but all draw lines.

Freedom defined by exceptions is not freedom but permission—conditional, revocable, dependent on who draws the lines. A bird with clipped wings is not partly free to fly; it is grounded. A silenced voice, even “partially controlled,” is still controlled. Unless freedom is absolute, it is no freedom at all.

And yet, absolute freedom is impossible under law. This contradiction exposes the limit of law itself.

Toward Philosophy, Myth, and Love

The deeper truth is that free speech cannot be sustained by law alone. Law must measure, weigh, and balance harms. Philosophy, however, dares to confront paradox. Myth goes further still, showing that truth is revealed not by control but by exposure.

In myth, truth is always costly. The Hebrew prophets spoke words that condemned kings, knowing it would endanger their lives. The Gospels preserve Christ’s paradox: freedom comes not by preservation but by surrender. In each, speech becomes revelation—an unveiling that transforms both speaker and hearer, even unto death.

Here free speech finds its true ground. Not in statutes, which cannot legislate love, but in culture: in citizens who endure insult, forgive injury, and open dialogue even in the face of lies. A society of such people is free, not because the state decrees it, but because love governs their speech.

The Paradox Completed

We arrive, then, where we began—with the paradox. Half the country defends speech as absolute, the other half defends protection as necessary. Both are right, and both are wrong. We do need absolute freedom, and we do need protection. But the two cannot coexist under the law. Law can only balance them, never reconcile them.

This is why the instinct to legislate free speech always fails. To legislate freedom is to destroy it. Freedom is not written in statutes but carried in culture, in citizens who choose restraint for themselves rather than demand it of others.

But freedom does more than restrain—it also protects. Those who defend free speech as absolute must also defend life with the same absolute. To demand freedom of words while tolerating dilapidated cities, rampant crime, drug addiction, and endless wars is to reveal that what we want is not freedom but privilege. For the law, in exposing these wounds, points to what is missing: love. And if there is no love, how can we claim to deserve freedom?

Here myth becomes our guide again. Myths remind us that freedom is never without risk, never without death. In Genesis, Adam speaks and names, but in speaking he also falls. In the Gospels, Christ speaks the truth, and the truth leads Him to the cross. Speech, in myth, is never neutral—it is creation and judgment, freedom and death together. It is revelation.

And philosophy confirms what myth reveals: freedom does not live in the obsession with scientific order, with regulation and control, but in the courage to endure paradox. Freedom survives not by eliminating risk but by bearing it. Free speech is not sustained by perfect laws, but by a people willing to suffer its wounds and to heal the wounds of others.

So the paradox remains: freedom must be absolute, and protection is necessary. Under law, the two cancel each other out. Under love, they meet—not by force, but by sacrifice. For love alone gives what law cannot: the strength to bear injury without returning it, and the compassion to protect others without silencing them.

This is why free speech is not merely a civil right but the revelation of who we are. It is the paradox made flesh: the willingness to be right and wrong at once, to endure contradiction without collapsing into control, to protect as much as we demand to be free.

Free speech is love. And love, always, demands everything.