Josh Hammer pushes back on free-speech absolutism after Samizdat gala
Josh Hammer, host of The Josh Hammer Show, used his platform this week to question whether free speech should be treated as the highest civic value. His essay, written after attending the Samizdat Prize Gala in Palm Beach on Wednesday evening (ET), frames free expression as an instrument that must be weighed against the pursuit of the common good and protections for religious exercise.
Gala moments put free speech debate in the spotlight
The dinner and awards ceremony — a gathering that drew prominent conservative and libertarian figures — featured contentious moments that highlighted the tensions Hammer would later address. A longtime law professor who received one of the night’s honors defended recognition of transgender identity from the podium and was met with audible boos before rallying applause by invoking free speech. Earlier remarks from the event’s host pushed back against a recent prosecution tied to a church disruption, framing it as a complex intersection of journalism, protest and religious liberty.
The mood at the ballroom was simultaneously celebratory and testing: honorees spoke about free expression, guests debated its boundaries, and several high-profile attendees were seen throughout the evening. The mix of convivial dinner courses and sharp rhetorical exchanges underscored the broader fault lines Hammer spotlights in his piece.
Hammer frames free speech as instrumental, not ultimate
In his essay, Josh Hammer argues that the political tradition has long subordinated free speech to higher communal aims. He contends that the Bill of Rights places religious liberty ahead of free speech and that laws protecting places of worship reflect a collective judgment about balancing freedoms. Hammer writes that free expression derives much of its social value from how it serves the pursuit of truth and the common good, rather than functioning as an end in itself.
Hammer invokes constitutional framing to bolster his point: free speech, while essential, is one tool among many for securing civic goods such as religious practice and public virtue. He warns against elevating individual expression above the institutions and moral practices that sustain a stable polity, and he suggests that some recent controversies demonstrate the potential costs of treating speech as the highest-order good.
The essay also challenges the view that free-speech protections exist primarily to validate every individual's subjective claim to be heard. Instead, Hammer draws on a classical notion of debate as a method for pursuing objective truth through rigorous exchange. That emphasis on truth-seeking, he argues, should inform contemporary judgments about where and when restrictions are appropriate to protect other prioritized liberties.
What the debate means for conservative and free-speech coalitions
The clash between absolutist and instrumentalist views of free speech is not merely academic; it has practical implications for how coalitions form and respond to controversies. Hammer’s critique landed at a gathering where allies and adversaries alike aired divergent takes on free expression, religion and public order. The event’s fraught moments illustrated how quickly principled disagreements can strain alliances and force groups to pick between competing values.
Whether Hammer’s intervention persuades skeptics within his ideological circle remains to be seen. What is clear is that the debate over hierarchy among constitutional goods is active and increasingly prominent in public life. For now, Hammer’s argument adds a prominent voice urging a recalibration: protect speech, he says, but do so in service of wider civic ends rather than as an absolute that overrides all other concerns.
