Last month, student groups at George Washington University issued a collective letter that reasoned as follows: (1) The Fraternal Order of Police union endorsed Trump. (2) “The FOP includes over 10,000 members in Washington D.C., many of which have jurisdiction over GW’s campus.” Therefore, (3) the use of campus security guards to protect the safety of GW students “is an act of violence, especially for Black students.”

If you were to ask students like those whether the government should ban websites that “exert moral pressure” against abortion, what would they say? “Yes, of course,” seems an entirely plausible answer.

Such assaults on freedom of expression are disturbing because they are not made for the sake of protecting some other right, such as the individual right to privacy. (Women have a right to abortion, but not a right to a world in which abortion is never criticized.) Rather, those who advocate such restrictions are willing to sacrifice a fundamental human right for the sake of far less compelling considerations, such as social harmony or the avoidance of hurt feelings.