Speech is a critical means of negotiating political, adaptive interests in human society. Prior research on motivated political cognition has found that support for freedom of speech depends on whether one agrees with its ideological content. However, it remains unclear if people (A) openly hold that some speech should be more free than other speech; or (B) want to appear as if speech content does not affect their judgments. Here, we find support for (B) over (A), using social dominance orientation and political alignment to predict support for speech. Study 1 demonstrates that if people have previously judged restrictions of speech which they oppose, they are less harsh in condemning restrictions of speech which they support, and vice versa. Study 2 finds that when participants judge two versions of the same scenario, with only the ideological direction of speech being reversed, their answers are strongly affected by the ordering of conditions: While the first judgment is made in accordance with one’s political attitudes, the second opposing judgment is made so as to remain consistent with the first. Study 3 is a preregistered replication and elaboration on Study 2. Study 4 suggests that this effort to appear consistent functions to oblige the opposition to (also) protect one's own speech: We find that support for equal protection of all speech is stronger if a member of the opposition proposes it, rather than a member of one's own political coalition. These results are consistent with notions of an evolutionary arms race of social manipulation, and suggest that although people selectively endorse universal moral principles depending on their own political agenda, they conceal their bias from others and, perhaps, themselves.