“Shooting people is wrong,” wrote the Daily Beast columnist Arthur Chu two days after radicalized Islamist gunmen shot and killed editors and cartoonists at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo (as well as others, including French police). He might have stopped there, but of course this laudable sentiment was invalidated by a subsequent “but.” Chu noted that the magazine had a tendency to aim its criticism “downward” at the Muslim population he perceived to be disadvantaged, as well as “upward” toward those in positions of power. “[L]et’s be real: pushing buttons, by itself, doesn’t make your work more virtuous,” Chu wrote. “Pissing people off is just pissing people off.”

Of course, free and unfettered expression for its own sake – particularly the provocative variety – is the only speech that needs to be preserved thorough law. But acute and mortal fear has a way of making that value seem downright quaint.

When Pamela Geller’s outfit repeated the stunt that got Charlie Hebdo’s editors and cartoonists killed by French Islamist totalitarians and successfully provoked the same response from a cast of American Islamist totalitarians, a Chu-like response to this violence emerged. “I understand and respect free speech,” wrote university professor and commentator Marc Lamont Hill. “But to organize hate speech events, purely because you’re legally allowed to, is disgusting.” “Free speech aside, why would anyone do something as provocative as hosting a “Muhammad drawing contest?” the perplexed New York Times foreign correspondent Rukmini Callimachi concurred.

Several hundred civilian deaths at the hands of radicalized Islamist militants later, the members of the same political affiliation that cannot bring themselves to say the enemy’s name remain as confused as ever as to how to combat it. In bewilderment and apprehension, they turn inward. The New York Times reported on Sunday that “some legal scholars are asking whether its time to reconsider” protections on free speech in response to the Islamic State’s propaganda network and the danger posed by the self-radicalized lone wolf terrorist. “Never before in our history have enemies outside the United States been able to propagate genuinely dangerous ideas on American territory in such an effective way,” wrote University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner. This American educator went on to note that the new threat posed by ISIS demands “new thinking about limits on freedom of speech.”

Though the enemy is domestic and political rather than foreign and soldierly, this impulse does not differ all that dramatically from that which compelled the Democrat-led Senate to cast a symbolic vote in 2014 in favor of amending the Constitution to restrict the Frist Amendment’s protections. “Billionaires buying elections is not what our Constitution stands for,” said self-described socialist Senator Bernie Sanders well before he became the greatest hope for the Democratic Party’s anti-Clinton wing. “The major issue of our time is whether the United States of America retains its democratic foundation or whether we devolve into an oligarchic form of society where a handful of billionaires are able to control our political process by spending hundreds of millions of dollars to elect candidates who represent their interests.” Of course, this is an invented menace fabricated by an addled imagination.

The “dark money” that was supposed to fuel Jeb Bush’s juggernaut materialized, but the presumption that deep-pocketed donors would yield to his campaign unrivaled influence was unfounded. Two connected candidates with among the more well-heeled of fundraising networks and loyal PACs flush with contributions, Rick Perry and Scott Walker, were among the first to drop out of the race. The party’s national frontrunner might be a billionaire, but he’s barely spent a dime on his campaign. Meanwhile, the system Sanders denounced as inherently unfair is the same system that allowed him to raise just $3.3 million less than Clinton in the third quarter of 2015 – and 88 percent of those donations came from contributors who provided $200 or less.

The corrupting influence of the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United and in the companion case, McCutcheon v. FEC, never materialized because these were fundamentally egalitarian decisions. “Citizens United also upheld disclosure requirements, the very opposite of shadowy. McCutcheon struck down the aggregate limits on the amount an individual may contribute during a two-year period to all federal candidates, parties and political-action committees combined,” wrote the famous litigator Ted Olson. “People’s rights to participate broadly in the political process are enhanced, not taken away, by the court’s ruling,” These decisions allowed for more competition in the marketplace of theory and ideology, and that hasn’t shaken out so well for one side of this equation. Naturally, if ignobly, this side now seeks to indict the marketplace as corrupt or unsafe.

The rush to place limits on free expression amid new threats is the impulse of a movement that does not have any confidence in the compelling power of its own ideas.

The answer to “dangerous speech” is rarely its curtailment. Even the often misunderstood proscriptions on incitement to violence or chaos are legally interpreted so narrowly that they don’t serve as compelling examples of limited free speech for the greater good. Of course, it’s perfectly legal to yell “fire” in a theater if the theater is on fire. Those who would sacrifice America’s most cherished freedoms in pursuit of the illusion of safety or fairness will find that a hard case to make. They’ll have no choice but to make it, however, so long as the crucible of ideas remains vibrant and competitive. Given that adversity, it’s no wonder they’re so apt to change the rules of the game.