The first argument is the argument about policy; the second argument is about whether the first argument is permissible.

Thus, for Ezra Klein and Sam Harris, the first argument is the argument about the relationship between race and intelligence, and the second argument is about whether Sam Harris is allowed to interview Charles Murray about the relationship between race and intelligence. For Michelle Goldberg, the first argument is about whether women and men can work together in the workplace, and the second argument is about whether it is appropriate to debate Jordan Peterson about whether women and men can work together in the workplace. For Robin Hanson and Jordan Weissmann, the first argument is about whether sexual opportunities should be redistributed, and the second argument is about whether Hanson should have been allowed to make the first argument. For Jennifer Finney Boylan, the first argument is about the treatment of trans people and the second argument about whether the treatment of trans people may be debated. In many cases, the second argument is couched in terms of the permissible ways of making the first argument (Hanson/Weissman), including who should be allowed to make the first argument (Klein/Harris), rather than the first argument is literally permissible, but ultimately it amounts to the same thing.

It’s enough to make your head spin, but the pattern is pretty clear. Person #1 makes an argument. Person #2 might criticize the argument on the merits, in which case we have a rare single-argument encounter. But with increasing frequency, Person #2 says (in essence) that Person #1’s willingness to make the first argument shows that Person #1 is a “creep,” or a fascist, or is acting in bad faith, which always is meant to imply that Person #1 should be fired from his job, or deprived of a public forum, or not taken seriously—should be publicly shamed. Moreover, because of the vagaries of language and the nature of the current hothouse political and cultural climate, it is easy for Person #2 to mistakenly (or deliberately) believe that Person #1 made the second argument even if Person #1 did not, which leads Person #2 to make the second argument about Person #1, namely that Person #1 is trying to censor and shame Person #2 and for that reason Person #1 should be fired, or deprived of a public forum, or not taken seriously (see Harris/Klein). Sooner or later, someone will make the second argument.

Because our government doesn’t censor people, second-argument makers have sought speech restrictions from the private sector, and have succeeded in many ways:

1. Universities, which have increasingly enacted speech codes.

2. Employers, which have cracked down on dissenters.

3. Social media companies, from Facebook to Twitter, which have imposed numerous restrictions on content.

4. Even content sellers, like Spotify, have gotten into act.

Failing all that, shame campaigns on social media may sometimes lead to 1, 2, 3, or 4.

While not all of this is new (employers have always regulated speech in workplaces), what is new is the contribution of technology, which has raised the stakes for everyone, and given tech giants quasi-monopolies over the public sphere, and ideological shifts, which have produced polarization (at least relative to the last 20-30 years). You can think of the second-argument phenomenon as the result of ideological polarization amplified by technological advances in communication.