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I don't think free speech advocates generally believe that (all) speech is innately valuable. Indeed, most defenders of free speech will address the obvious fact that they are frequently defending shitty speech from terrible/crazy/stupid people. The argument is that "the right to speak your mind without being punished" - i.e., that the Powers That Be should not be able to define what you are or are not allowed to say - is innately valuable.
Obviously, there are failure modes (hence the typical leftist pedantry about how censorship by every media and financial platform in the world isn't really censorship, it's just "social consequences for your behavior"), and there are also arguments people have made here that actually, censorship is good and the government should restrict what you can say ("to what aligns with my values," of course), but "speech is innately valuable" is a straw man.
How can speaking your mind be valuable if the speech itself is not? What about you, random person, is so incredible that the mere act of saying your shitty thoughts out loud transforms them into something worthwhile?
You say it's a strawman, I say it's a necessary component to free speech. The human soul is not an alchemic chalice transforming lead into gold, here.
Because I would like to be able to speak my mind, even if I'm an idiot or a loon, without being put in jail or cast out of society. That is the principle being defended, not "Everything that comes out of everyone's mouth is worth hearing."
Okay, but why do I want you to speak your mind? That's why I said free speech is the underdog. Of course we all want to speak; but why should anyone else give a damn and let us?
Free speech is a hard sale, which is why so many people don't really support it.
Slippery slope, game theory, etc. Many of our civil rights are established not based on the principle that everyone agrees that they are universally good for everyone to exercise all the time, but on the basis that we would not like our enemies to be able to deprive us of them even if it would be pleasant to deprive our enemies of them.
Obviously, if you think you can gain power and hold power forever, then it is only by your own charity that anyone else is allowed to have rights.
Ding ding ding! Free speech is the position of losers -- or, at least, people who believe they have solid odds of losing.
Most people aren't pessimistic enough to care about free speech. They want speech policed according to their obviously correct values.
Just because your values are "obviously" correct, doesn't mean you can rely on a majority of the population agreeing with you. In every human society prior to ours (and most likely including ours) a majority of the population believed in things we now know/believe to be false. I find it staggeringly arrogant to think "My values are obviously correct, therefore I never have to worry about them being suppressed or censored at any point in the future". I think it's arrogant to believe that even if your values are ones which have never been at serious risk of suppression or censorship for your entire life.
I suspect vanishingly few people think right makes might. I don't, so you've misunderstood somewhere along the way.
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Which, in a democracy, is everyone, periodically. Even in autocracies, dictators usually don't go full Orwell in part for fear of being at the losing end of a revolt.
Well, no, most people are realistic enough, especially in a democracy, to foresee a possible future in which they are no longer in power, even if they are in power currently.
You genuinely believe the average person thinks life is doomed to a political back and forth, rather than people eagerly anticipating and expecting their permanent majority? From my end of things, it certainly seems that a sizeable chunk of the electorate believes it has a long-term cure for that pesky "losing elections" problem, whether that be from fortifying them or changing demographics (a fact widely celebrated in the open, so long as you don't call it Replacement Theory).
I do not think it's coincidence that the left has veered sharply more censorious in tandem with the left exerting ever-greater control over the nation's social and political future. And I don't think it'll be coincidence when the Right takes power and suddenly ditches this free speech angle to suppress the degenerates, the globalists, the groomers, etc.
For a certain value of "the average person" - meaning, "people who spend enough time thinking about politics to consider this question" - yes.
I do not think that for the most part, even your censorious leftists and equally censorious rightists are just pretending to want to let their opponents have rights until they can solve that pesky problem of not being in power forever and ever.
Of course, if being in power forever and ever actually becomes a realistic possibility, we might see people realigning their views.
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