The First Amendment is alive and well, which is a reassuring note about the basic legal protections for free speech. Assassin's Veto, and the Cheers That FollowedBut less than two weeks after Charlie Kirk was murdered because an assassin apparently didn't like what he had to say, it's obvious that free speech culture is besieged. "There's free speech and then there's hate speech, and there is no place, especially now, especially after what happened to Charlie, in our society," Bondi commented. But while a majority (59 percent) of Americans still say they support free speech for everybody in a recent poll by Vanderbilt University's Project on Unity and American Democracy and The Future of Free Speech, that majority is countered by sizeable 41 percent who say, "there are times when free speech should be prohibited or certain subjects or speakers prohibited." That's a lot of Americans with tenuous respect for free speech.