To be clear, I'm talking about people saying things like "those people are lesser than me", not things like "those people should be eradicated". Inciting violence, or any crime, is not an exercise of free speech, that's a crime.

I guess I just don't see any ethical difference between wielding the power of legislation to silence speech, and an angry mob of vigilantes gathering and silencing them in person. Either way, it's the society saying "we don't like your words, and we're gonna punish you for that."

I just know that throughout history, people have used "I'm confident in my beliefs" to justify limiting speech they thought would be harmful to their society, only for us to look back in shame at their intolerance.

I can say I'm confident that intolerance harms our society, I just don't think it's possible to legislate away hate. We can physically intimidate people into hiding their hate, but making hate illegal will never get rid of it. But maybe that's the best we can ever do, I don't know.

Looking at history, i just don't have any reason to believe that any sociological hurdle can be solved by moving strictly in a "positive" direction. I understand local maxima, and understand that society always has to regress before it can progress. For the same reason we can't legislate away hate, we can't legislate in "progress". We might try, and it might seem like it's working for a little while, until it doesn't. And that's when humanity learns a new lesson.