Without question, my nervous system is calmer and my blood pressure is lower as a result of Twitter’s ban of Donald Trump.

The same is true on a far broader scale in the reduced anxiety and venom across our body politic. That is not nothing. A system at the boiling point needed responsible figures to turn down the temperature several notches.

Yet, my feelings about such “deplatforming” are conflicted at best. Along with that which is gained – my pulse rate being but one indicator, much is also lost or compromised. That negative side of the ledger may well include some foundational principles.

Of the many hot-button issues of the moment, none produces for me the same kind of dissonance as this question of denying certain individuals and viewpoints access to social media platforms. My internal dialogue on the subject is rich and active as I am unable to get fully comfortable with either position.

Let me give you a glimpse inside to that discord and bring you in on the internal exchange and noise. Though it is rarely that simple, I will label the combative voices as my head and my gut.

Head: Trump’s use of Twitter and his very being are often hateful and reckless. But the First Amendment does not have an exception for speech that is toxic or in poor form.

Gut: Trump’s ban was well earned and perhaps even belated. If the man did not foment an armed uprising against our very democracy, he came mighty close.

Head: Indeed. But at the end of the day, it was an amateur-hour revolt. Does not free speech apply to even rebellious statements? Protecting popular speech is easy. The test is whether we stand up to protect controversial speech with which we disagree.

Gut: Free speech, my arse. The man yelled “fire” in a crowded theater. Good riddance.

Head: The censorship cure, especially when applied to a President or former President, is its own form of poison. Let him speak and let his pronouncements die of their own dead weight.

Gut: That is the problem. Those ideas, no matter how debased, do not die. They spread. He has convinced nearly 60% of his party that the election was somehow stolen. Rather than extinguishing lies, the internet amplifies them. Excuse me, not lies, just “alternative facts.”

Head: So Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg, and a few of their like-minded toadies, are now to be society’s censors?

Gut: Better them than no one. Twitter and Facebook are private companies. These are rightful, legal, private sector decisions, not some kind of government censorship.

Head: You can make the case that Twitter and Facebook are tantamount to public utilities. But whether private or quasi-private, do we really want to head down the road of Canada and many European countries with codes of forbidden speech?

Gut: Hey, we already have speech codes on college and university campuses – no matter how off-kilter, repressive and often over the top. But that does not change the fact that certain speech is beyond the pale. How about this recent press statement from Trump: “Happy Father’s Day to all, including the Radical Left, RINOs, and other Losers of the world. Hopefully, eventually, everyone will come together!” Are we really worse off without that going to 80 million Twitter followers?

Head: Always classy. But here is a more consequential quote from the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right of freedom of opinion and expression. This right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.” Trump has become the personification, but the issue is about far more than him.

Gut: Nice words. But I am okay without the likes of Michael Flynn and Milo Yiannopoulos and Alex Jones polluting social media. Let folks within a few time zones of sanity have the medium. Lose the nutjobs.

Head: That is fine to say. But how do you keep this from being an ideological purge? Moreover, there is a real danger that ideas repressed only fester and grow stronger in the shadows.

Gut: There is risk to any course of action. We are seeing an explosion of hate. And of blatant falsehoods that way too many people believe. If a banishment or two dials that back even a little, that is good news.

Head: Let’s go back to free speech. If the ACLU, though sadly a different organization now, could defend the right of Nazis to march through Skokie, Illinois, home to so many Holocaust survivors, then we can indulge and survive Trump’s social media presence.

Gut: Did I mention that Trump almost literally yelled “fire” in a theater?

Head: The market will sort this out. In the political market, Trump is becoming ever less credible and popular. More important is the marketplace of ideas. As we have for most of our country’s history, why don’t we let that market separate the good ideas from the bad with a minimum of regulation, interference and silencing?

Gut: Heady stuff. But enlightenment does not always triumph. Bigotry, false narratives and conspiracy theories are doing quite well. Any medium needs its gatekeepers.

Head: That sounds so innocent, but “gatekeepers” can soon grow quite authoritarian. Overreach is inevitable. Trump may be a serial abuser. But the cure of taking away platforms may be worse than the disease.

Gut: I trust you see the irony of worrying about the speech rights of this particular person who often displayed hostility to that idea in addition to inciting physical harm to those in the media.

With that, my gut disappears under the covers while my head rests on a pillow, and I nod off.

For me, the issue remains unresolved. It is nuanced; it pits important values against each other. To any for whom this question is black and white, I would suggest that is symptomatic of the absolutism that has gained an alarming hold on our politics and led us to this troubled juncture.

Eric Sondermann is a Colorado-based independent political commentator. He writes regularly for ColoradoPolitics and the Denver Gazette. Reach him at EWS@EricSondermann.com; follow him at @EricSondermann. Read his other columns here.