This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, October 17, 2017.

I'm Caleb Brown.

How apt is the metaphor that speech should be protected in order to preserve the marketplace

of ideas.

At the Cato Institute's conference on the First Amendment, Attorney Bob Bauer discussed what

free speech means for many progressives in pursuit of a broadly agreeable

path forward for defending a robust First Amendment.

So let me begin by talking a little bit about progressivism,

how it's viewed for these purposes,

how we might think about it, and where

I think some of the stereotypes could trip us up

and could be confusing not just to critics of progressives

but maybe to progressives themselves. Let me broadly say that I look at

progressives and I'm going to have to descend to a certain level of abstraction here

as differing from to a certain level of abstraction here,

as differing from their colleagues and interlocutors

on the right in their vision of the appropriate role

of government in alleviating communal and human suffering and achieving a vision of social justice.

That's not the only point of difference, but I want to focus on that for a moment.

And I want to say to begin with by way of flicking aside some common stereotypes, having that view is not incompatible with a concern about the size or efficiency of government,

a skepticism about government, or an understanding

of the limits of government.

...