Google fired James Damore, a talented engineer, for a polite discussion in which he suggested that men and women have certain differences. And that Google should work with those differences to get more women involved in coding.
Conservatives and libertarians who protested the move were mocked for suggesting that Damore had free speech.
Now Randa Jarrar, a Fresno State English prof, is under fire for celebrating the death of Barbara Bush. And wishing death on the whole Bush family. Jarrar had allegedly also previously praised airplane hijackers.
So of course, to the left, it's a free speech issue. And it's time for lectures about how we have to tolerate repugnant speech.
Okay.
No one is arguing that Randa Jarrar doesn't have the right to say hateful things. But the left is arguing implicitly that it's a right reserved for the left. And that's not how free speech works.
We can't have a society in which people on the right are fired for even the most minor deviations from the left's point of view. This week we were treated to the bizarre spectacle of a Canadian country singer being forced to apologize for saying that she would have voted for Trump. Meanwhile lefties get the right to spew every possible form of hate, up to and including murderous rants.
We can have free speech. Or everyone who offends any group can be immediately slapped down.
But we can't have free speech as a privilege reserved for the left.