What a lot of people don't understand is that speech has a legal definition that is especially relevant in cases of libel or incitement. Once it can be considered speech, the content of that speech in public areas is allowed to vary under the first amendment in the US.
It's not splitting hairs, because this is routinely debated in courts all over the country. As for whether or not people having the ability to speak freely leads to a loss of rights, the US has been around for some time now and is pretty quickly gaining rights for people in the grand scheme of things. The suppression of speech has not fared the same, and both sides of the aisle can (hypocritically) point to suppression of speech leading to a loss or possible loss of rights. If we want to talk about speech and history, it's much easier to find examples of control that goes too far, and often a lot more quickly.
It's not splitting hairs, because this is routinely debated in courts all over the country. As for whether or not people having the ability to speak freely leads to a loss of rights, the US has been around for some time now and is pretty quickly gaining rights for people in the grand scheme of things. The suppression of speech has not fared the same, and both sides of the aisle can (hypocritically) point to suppression of speech leading to a loss or possible loss of rights. If we want to talk about speech and history, it's much easier to find examples of control that goes too far, and often a lot more quickly.