If ever there were a more important time in the last half-century to lift up Americans First Amendment right to free speech, its today. Its a foundation stone of our democratic republic, but one that is under increasing stress with each passing day.

Take, for example, the events of July 8 in Charlottesville.

Earlier this year, the Charlottesville City Council voted to remove statues of Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson and rename the parks where they now stand Justice Park and Emancipation Park. The actual removal is on hold with a suit by statue supporters making its way through the legal system.

In the meantime, the statues have become a flashpoint in the ongoing culture wars. Richard Spencer, a founder of the alt-right white supremacist movement, has been to town for a rally. Corey Stewart, the fiery anti-immigrant populist who barely lost the June 13 Republican gubernatorial primary, has embraced the statues as his ticket to a larger political stage. A Charlottesville white nationalist blogger has seen his profile rise considerably, and in June there was a torch-lit rally of support for the statues that reminded many of Ku Klux Klan rallies of decades past.

Perhaps most disturbing of all, last weekend more than four dozen members and supporters of a Ku Klux Klan coven from North Carolina, who had obtained an assembly permit from the city, held a rally at the foot of the Lee statue.

Community leaders, from the mayor to the president of the University of Virginia, urged folks to stay away from the KKKs protest. The university and city helped plan and stage several community events designed to blunt the KKKs message of hate. But still, more than 1,000 gathered in and around the two parks theyre just blocks from each other to protest the Klans presence in the city.

Tensions understandably were high. After all, its not every day you see a gathering of Klansmen in their robes and regalia, waving Confederate flags and spouting their hateful rhetoric. Nor is it every day that a thousand or more protesters show up to counter that message. Police officers took elaborate steps to protect the Klansmen as they exercised their First Amendment rights, the same rights the anti-Klan protesters were exercising.

At the conclusion of the rally, specially trained Virginia State Police troopers were on hand to make certain the Klan members were able to exit safely, but they still had a phalanx of protesters to make it through. In those moments, anything could have set off a tragic series of events.

Police asked the thousand-member crowd to disperse and go home as the Klan rally had ended. They begged, they pleaded nothing. They officially declared the crowd an unlawful assembly under Virginia law and warned protesters to leave nothing. They put on their gas masks as a way to tell protesters what was next nothing. Then came the release of three canisters of tear gas, and in the following moments, almost two dozen protesters were arrested and charged with various offenses.

The KKK rally and the counter-protest were difficult to watch, but they illustrate just how important the First Amendment is and why we must protect it. There are legal limits to free speech, but the Klan was well inside the perimeter of whats legal, as were the KKK opponents. The police stoically and professionally did their jobs of protecting the public and making it possible for citizens to exercise their constitutional rights in as safe an environment as possible.

Spencer, the alt-right founder, is planning another rally next month, and already there is trepidation about what could transpire. Let him exercise his right to free speech, though its ugly hate speech. Let his opponents rally against him, but peacefully. We cant let the First Amendment become the victim of mobs, on either the left or the right.

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