The New Yorker magazine asks in a recent issue whether there’s too much free speech. The answer is no. The freedom of speech is at the heart of what it means to be an American and an engaged citizen. We don’t have to like all the speech that’s out there, but the answer is always – always – more speech (i.e., competing ideas), rather than censorship.

“The freedom of speech promised by the First Amendment has fluctuating limits – in general, elected politicians want more [limits], and unelected ones (that is, judges) want fewer,” the New Yorker contends. “In 1919, the Supreme Court ruled that speech could be regulated only if it presented ‘a clear and present danger,’ and then, more narrowly, in 1969, only if it was likely to incite ‘imminent lawless action.’ Each of these cases concerned a political protest: a socialist anti-conscription flyer, in the first, and a speech by a Klansman, in the second.”

That’s a pretty good summary of what the courts say. But the New Yorker steers off course when talking about where many of today’s free speech battles are taking place – academia.

“On college campuses, for instance, the core educational mission routinely trumps students’ rights to express themselves,” the New Yorker writes. “(Rules against plagiarism and disruptive behavior are both, in a sense, campus speech regulations.)”

That’s only true in a broad sense – plagiarism and disruptive behavior are speech, but they are also infractions. When a student is disciplined for plagiarism, he or she is being disciplined for stealing another’s work, not for making a statement. A disruptive student is stealing valuable instructional time from other students. Here’s an analogy that makes it more clear: A bank robber says “hand over the money.” He doesn’t go to jail for what he said, he goes to jail for the action.

Still, the New Yorker contends we’re out of step with our more enlightened European allies.

“Speech nuts, like gun nuts, have amassed plenty of arguments, but they – we – are driven, too, by a shared sensibility that can seem irrational by European standards,” it writes. “And, just as good-faith gun-rights advocates don’t pretend that every gun owner is a third-generation hunter, free-speech advocates need not pretend that every provocative utterance is a valuable contribution to a robust debate, or that it is impossible to make any distinctions between various kinds of speech.”

Since when does support of the First Amendment make anyone a “speech nut”? Linking the First to the Second Amendment shows where the New Yorker is going with this: we should be willing to accept “reasonable” limits to the freedom of speech – their version of “reasonable.”

Here’s the problem a left-leaning publication like the New Yorker should consider. What’s good for the goose is, reportedly, good for the gander. These days, it’s conservatives and traditionalists who are being silenced, on college campuses and elsewhere.

But politics is a pendulum, and eventually, conservatives will be in power again.

That’s when the New Yorker will find arguments for free speech absolutism to be much more convincing.