It is not unconstitutional to call an idiot an idiot.

Okay, admittedly, if you are a federal agency (look around; if there is a book with "C.F.R." on the spine that tells you how to buy a stapler, you may be a federal agency), then there may be constitutional implications to the way you handle a jackass. But if you are a plebe -- if you are an ordinary civilian, just trying to get from home to work in the morning and back at night without being accosted by fools -- then you can comfortably look at any nitwit you'd like and say the following: "You are a nitwit." The feds are not coming for you.

I bring this up only because it seems to be so widely misunderstood. You know what happens, don't you, every time some self-appointed provocateur takes the dam off the stream of consciousness and puts us all in up to our knees in nonsense? In bigotry, or small-mindedness, or just plain damn fool thinking? Someone complains. Someone comes out swinging from the opposite corner. Sometimes, someone tries to create consequences. There's a boycott of the radio station or the network, or someone publicly advocates the firing of the relevant ass. And when that happens, that's when you'll hear it.

"But . . . but . . . but . . . free speech!"

Ultimately, the inevitable letters to the editor will argue, we live in a country that values free speech. Hell, it is one of our founding principles, isn't it? Freedom of conscience. Freedom to think for yourself. Freedom to believe in God or not, in astrology or not, in FDR or not, in Keynes or not, in feminism or not, in altruism or not, in putting Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame or not, in Dave Eggers or Dave Barry or Bill O'Reilly or Bill Clinton or the Holy Church of the Sacred Light Bulb, if that is your particular preference. The guys in the wigs, the guys in Philadelphia, the guys who wrote those musical redundancies like "ordain and establish" . . . didn't they mean for us to speak our minds?

Oh, yes. They did. And then they expected us to suffer the consequences.

It's one of those words . . . free. It's seductive and lithe, and there isn't anyone who doesn't like the way it sounds. In the abstract, it sounds like locks breaking, or a guy with a foot of chain still wrapped around his ankle scrambling out of a hole. Give me liberty or give me death. Of course, when you actually hear it in your day-to-day life, that isn't what it usually means. It usually means free with purchase, free for sixty days, free when you join, free with this coupon. And maybe that's the problem. Maybe the problem is the distinction between free verse on one hand and free beer on the other.

It doesn't take a constitutional scholar to tell you that First Amendment principles aren't going to give you a way to sue the company you work for, unless you can tie it to the government. They won't protect you from your angry neighbor who stopped speaking to you because you put a Nader sign in your yard or your nemesis who had you drummed out of your book club because you defended the patriotism of anti-war demonstrators. Intellectually, people know this. Seventh-grade civics is with them at some level. Still, they will argue for the extension of the principle. Acknowledging that the First Amendment does not technically apply to their employers or book clubs or the businesses they patronize, they will argue that a good employer or book club or business will act as if it did. It won't subject people to consequences based on what they believe or what they say. After all, don't we want people to speak freely? To undertake a public campaign of opposition to someone's comments, or to try to have her fired, or refuse to serve her at your coffee shop, just because she spouts off regularly in some way you find deeply offensive . . . wouldn't that be . . . wrong? And actually, shouldn't we avoid vitriolic criticism generally, out of respect for everyone's right to be heard? If nothing else, shouldn't we refrain from things like that to serve the spirit, if not the letter, of the First Amendment?

In a word, no. Let me say it again. No. Nobody invented the First Amendment to make sure that no matter what you thought, or said, or said about what you thought, nothing would happen to you. The federal constitution was not written so that no one would call you on your bullshit. It doesn't mean there aren't costs. Think free verse, not free beer.

In fact, if everyone lived this way -- cowering from conflict and argument, afraid to say no, afraid to thwart anyone's id or step on their buzz or imply that what they just said was the stupidest thing we ever heard, or that we will never listen again to a radio station or read a newspaper that would continue to employ them -- it would destroy, not serve, the spirit of the First Amendment. You're supposed to participate. You're supposed to get in there and argue, and sometimes, when it really matters, you're supposed to make it expensive or unpleasant or uncomfortable to be wrong. That's why the government doesn't do it. The guys in the wigs expected the rest of us to deal with you. The entire notion of the First Amendment is that in the marketplace of ideas, the morons will go broke. If you insist on buying from them out of some twisted notion of equity or community or "judge not, lest ye be judged," you are failing the system.

In fact, sometimes, you have to do more than just speak. Don't hire jerks. Don't read newspapers whose editorial boards make you feel guilty for giving them your fifty cents. Don't socialize with bigots. Don't buy products from companies that advance positions you hate. Get out there. You're supposed to.

But what about defending people's right to be wrong? What about blah blah blah, but I will defend to the death your right to say it? What about that?

Well, yes. Right. But defending the right to say something, in the sense that you wouldn't have the guy thrown in jail for it, doesn't diminish the equivalent right to pronounce it wrong or to create consequences for it. This is where debates over content too often degenerate into debates over process. The question of whether a person is full of crap becomes conflated with the question of whether he should have said anything, given his full-of-crap opinion. You'll hear someone spout a line of absolute nonsense, and he'll take a public beating for it, and then you'll hear something like this: "Would you rather he had lied? How can you blame him for speaking what's in his heart?"

How can I blame him? Because he's wrong, that's how. It's not anyone's obligation to put aside content on the basis of sincerity. Integrity in speaking what you believe to be true is one question; whether you're right or wrong about it is a different question.

And whatever happened to wrong, anyway? Not driven by evil motives, not uneducated, not ignorant, not speaking out of turn, just . . . wrong? Not all arguments are parry and thrust. Substantive disagreement isn't best understood as a demand for an apology, a personal rejection, or the opening of a pitched battle that needs to last years. It doesn't just mean change your behavior -- be nicer, be more polite, be more reticent, be more politic. It means change your mind. Or consider changing your mind. Or at least acknowledge that merely making an argument -- asking you to change your mind -- is not an assault on your personal freedom.

Of course you're supposed to speak your mind. But you do it to advance the discussion and perhaps even make other people smarter, not because there's an amnesty program that promises that no one will hit back. If you're saying anything of value, someone probably will. They'll tell you you're wrong, they'll express an opposing view, and you will be called upon to make an argument in favor of your position. It isn't intimidation. It isn't unfair to you. Arguing the merits of your position is not combat and shouldn't be frightening. Get in there and do it. And if an idiot is an idiot, you can call him an idiot. Yes, in most cases, it would be a preposterous overreaction to go after people -- their jobs, their businesses, and so forth -- over a disagreement. I'd agree that it's probably wise to adopt a personal ethic of "argue, but live and let live" for all but the most vital kinds of wrong you run into. But there are disagreements that are worth more, and when you find one, you're not rejecting the principle of free speech by acting.

Other people know things you don't, they've experienced things you haven't, they were brought up in different houses than you were, and the sum of the influences that sway them is probably not clear to them, let alone to you. But this is what free speech is. It's arguing, and it is disagreement, and sometimes it is indeed hammering a knucklehead until he whimpers. You gain nothing, and certainly democracy gains nothing, from your being precious or timid about it.

Go ahead. Say it. Thomas Jefferson won't be mad at you.