Thoughts On Fredom

Freedom is lovely, but the expectation that freedom is a binary switch that needs to always be on the freedom side is dumb to me. In America, there are a lot of people who complain about their freedoms being violated when, in reality, it's more complicated than just "freedom means you can do or say anything you want and not get judged."
Freedom of speech is not the ability to say anything you want without judgement, freedom of speech is that EVERYONE can say whatever they want, including words that pass judgement on another person's words
And in a society that must function on a larger scale, one must find a balance between freedom, and agreed upon rules, laws, and even social norms that allow the society to run smoothly and to preserve a certain degree of freedom for everyone, not just a group of people
We as people have a responsibility to use our power of free speech in countries that have it responsibly, lest we take it for granted and make it harder for other people to exercise the same right
And yeah freedom is not perfect. Within a democracy or whatever is the seeds of its own corruption and the people can choose poorly, but part of my philosophy as a semi-existentialist is that it is a fundamental aspect of every human being to search for meaning and purpose, and every human being should be, to some extent, free to do so, while striving to ensure that others have the same right
I would much rather risk the demise of a society than never grant people those freedoms in the first place and never do my best to support and work to improve the balancing act we do with freedom and the instruments of a society
An idealistic perspective, I know, perhaps naive, but it's one I've sat more or less comfortably with for a while.