Blackface and oblique references are not "incitement to violence".
As Jason noted, I was referring to the banning of the KKK statements, which are most certainly an incitement to violence. The banning of wearing blackface is a bit more controversial and I would even say I'm against it, but it's all about context. If the manner in which it was done was to scare or intimidate others then I would say that kind of act should be banned. But there is also an historical tradition of wearing blackface for performance purposes that is in no way demeaning or aggressive towards others, and this should definitely be ok. However in the case of something like wearing blackface it could be difficult to make a rule allowing one while banning the other and so in this case I could see a case for banning it purely to prevent the aggressive version of it even though its other use should theoretically be protected. But again, if the use of blackface in that context was going on concurrently with an active KKK presence I could see how the two would be seen as correlated to each other and how sporting blackface could be seen as a direct threat.
On top of that, you are making a slippery argument... "duh" to banning some instances of speech, whereas today you have Trump saying he'll pay legal fees for violent followers of his who rough up protestors and this is somehow fine. In essence, you are making a value judgement on speech - which is exactly what college students are accused of doing now. It doesn't mean, as Jason implies, that free speech is "dead" or whatever other hyperbolic claim you want to make. It means that a group exists that has placed (God forbid) some other value above unrestricted speech.
I agree with your sentiment (that unlimited freedom to say anything isn't desirable for the common good) but disagree in the specifics of your example here. Trump's position was that he doesn't like the practice of 'protesters', which he says are really disruptors (and this is often an accurate description), and that he sympathizes with people who lose their cool when goaded by those people. In specific, Trump said of the man who struck such a protester that he got carried away and that he does not at all condone violence. You can call BS on Trump's comments, but in themselves they are totally consistent; being against violence, disliking the disruptors, and feeling sympathy for a guy who lost his cool and did something bad when goaded. If anything there is something humane about the sentiment that "the guy got carried away and did something wrong but I want to help him", which is a contrast from the usual treatment of 'wrongdoers' in the media who are vilified without qualification. Note again that while violence is bad, the intent using rhetoric to squash 'protesters' of this type is to prevent them interfering with the right for Trump and his supporters to meet in peace and speak. I'm sure some people who appear to protest Trump do so in good conscience and others are trying to disrupt the event, so obviously I mean this only in regards the ones who would like to use their presence to interfere with the meeting as planned. Trump removing disruptors from his rallies isn't a clear case of preventing speech at all; indeed, taking steps to ensure that a planned meeting can proceed without interference is itself the protection of speech and free association. I'm reminded of the Sanders rally with huge attendance where fake members of BLM showed up and cowed him into walking off the stage and cancelling the rally. That just isn't acceptable, and I don't blame Trump for taking steps to prevent such things. Since I'm not physically present at his events I can't tell you whether he's really doing this or whether he's escorting out peaceful, nice people who just disagree with him. But I have little doubt that
there are the types of protesters Trump refers to, and I wouldn't want to tolerate them either.
I would also note that whatever it is that's happening now, the magnitude of it seems to be greater than it was then.
We tend to think our problems are worse than they were in history - but is this really true? How would you find out? Your 2008 recession example is fine and dandy because we have economic data and can objectively say this one was worse than usual. But do you have such data besides anecdote that there is really a more severe problem than usual in this arena? Or is it just a 'feeling'? Perhaps social media has simply made us more aware of things that always existed.
This is your best point, as it's more central to the issue. The old adage that every generation thinks things are going downhill does tend to be true, but this fact shouldn't be taken to mean that things never actually do go downhill! It just means people aren't great at judging when this is
really the case and when it's just false memory or lack of perspective talking. In the case of the recession it's obvious the 2008 one is the worst since the Depression, and as you say the metrics to determine this are fairly simple. So what kind of metric could we use for speech on campuses? I admit I'm at a loss to come up with a concrete one, and so again you're right that personal perception might have to suffice right now as far as evidence goes.
I would agree to a compromise on this topic, though, which would be that I happen to think what Jason is describing regarding free speech on campus is actually a symptom of general polarization in culture and politics. It's people being divided and conquered so they fight each other rather than those who really abuse them. I think protesting outrageous things has happened for a long time, including police brutality, the Vietnam war, harsh drug laws, and so forth. Because of the current polarization it's become normal to think of simple opposition to one's political views as being an evil outrage, and where supporters of 'the other side' are seen as the enemy rather than as good people who disagree. In this light the protester mentality might not have changed (that truly evil and inhuman things should be opposed and protested), but what has changed is that they now count under this heading speech on any topic in opposition to their causes du jour. Basically the new normal is that it's evil to disagree, and so the logic follows that such dissent must be opposed. In this sense the lower value of freedom of speech seems to me a symptom rather than a cause, the cause being an increasing tendency towards vilifying and even hating people who disagree with you. We could argue that this type of phenomenon has surely existed in the past, and current pop culture tends to assign that past to the Jim Crow era, and to evangelicals and other radical Christians who employ hatred to maintain their base. But what seems to be on the rise is left-wing people (what used to be the hippy free-love crowd) who speak in these same terms and use the same vilifying moral epithets to describe the evil people who speak about evil ideas (like being pro-life, or *gasp* anti-misandry).
In short: Josh, you're entirely right. The desire to restrict speech isn't the core issue, since that desire always follows from identifying a type of speech as being dangerous, subversive, or truly evil. What has changed is which sorts of things are now considered to fall under those categories, and to me that's the real danger; that dissent will become synonymous with evil. This quagmire has been with us for a long time on the abortion issue, but now many other issues have become just as divisive and intractable.
