Freedom of Speech for the Few or the Many?

The following comment was chosen as a "Times Pick" today after being published on the New York Times online blog in response to today's Times op-ed piece by Adam Liptak, titled, "How Conservatives Weaponized the First Amendment":

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/30/us/politics/first-amendment-conservatives-supreme-court.html?comments#commentsContainer

We need a national consensus that it is in general the less powerful whose liberties should be protected, above all in saying unpopular things. It should apply essentially to individuals, nor corporate entities, to all expressions of thought in all institutional contexts, and usually not just to behaviors from which opinions can be inferred. 

It is doubtful that corporate entities truly have opinions at all, as opposed to merely interests. Free speech means something different to a publishing company than it does to the writers on its payroll.

A worker in a company, a citizen stopped by a police officer, a psychiatric patient conferring with his doctor, a student at a school, and your neighbor on the subway, should all be protected by a free speech policy. We are not. 

We have a culture of experts who manage the lesser plebeians. Its dominant ideology is psychological, meaning people can be managed through their emotions. This culture is highly anti-democratic. The boss will have a reason for being right, but it's easy to see he's always right only because he is the boss. The consolation prize is that you can freely keep your opinion and mind your own business. 

Never was a society that champions liberty but not democracy not also one of great oppressions and injustices. 

Liberty and democracy are different principles, but they must go together. Liberty atrophies in societies that, on the British and American model. are not very democratic.