Despite what the haters say, I am a free speech absolutist. You are free to say whatever you want. I am free not to associate with you. That’s how it works.
I just submitted a nomination of the LPNH for the Nackey Loeb First Amendment Award. Herewith:
I am writing to nominate the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire (LPNH) for the 2025 Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment Award, not in spite of their provocations–but because of them.
With their slogan, “Become Insufferable,” LPNH embodies the oldest and most uncomfortable truth of free speech: it isn’t meant to protect what’s popular, polite, or palatable. It’s there for the speech that makes your stomach churn. The kind that earns gasps, not claps. The kind that, historically, gets banned–right before everything else does, too.
Their social media posts–mostly lowbrow, often crass, frequently controversial, and sometimes downright offensive–force an urgent question into the public square: Do we still believe in free speech when it’s speech we abhor?
This is the very principle the ACLU defended in 1977, when they backed the National Socialist Party’s right to march through Skokie, Illinois. A Jewish lawyer, David Goldberger, argued that denying speech to the worst among us imperils speech for the rest of us. The Supreme Court agreed.
Like Skokie, the LPNH case is not about agreement or taste. It’s about whether the First Amendment applies equally to the unpopular, the indecent, the mad. Their July 2025 tweet–calling Martin Luther King a communist and mocking his legacy–was widely condemned, as was their 2024 post suggesting violence against Kamala Harris (later taken down). These are abhorrent messages to many, including to me. But this nomination isn’t about whether I like what they said. It’s about whether they had the right to say it.
LPNH insists they do–and they haven’t backed down. Even under pressure from national leadership, tech platform censorship, FBI inquiries, and widespread public backlash, they’ve doubled down on their core message: free speech must include the offensive, or it means nothing at all.
Legal precedent is on their side. Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) clarified that even incendiary speech is protected unless it is both intended and likely to incite imminent lawless action. LPNH’s posts–though tasteless and provocative–have not crossed that legal threshold. What they have done is spark nationwide debate about the boundaries of protected speech in the digital age, about the line between rhetoric and violence, and about the role of political satire, trolling, and provocation in a polarized country.
Like Nackey Scripps Loeb herself, the LPNH uses its platform to challenge sacred cows and poke the establishment in the eye. You don’t have to agree with them–in fact, it’s better if you don’t. That’s the test. That’s the point.
I urge the committee to consider this nomination not as an endorsement of content, but as a defense of principle. In a world increasingly hostile to dissent, the LPNH’s unapologetic use of their First Amendment rights keeps the flame of free speech burning–messy, chaotic, and vital.
With respect and a deep belief in the power of defending the right to speak one’s mind, so that we may know which fools not to suffer gladly.