Socratic seminar: What is free thought? Is it similar to freedom of speech ?

Free thought ? This topic was from the paper of the Socratic seminar but,  we never got to talk about it. Now in my opinion I would have to say that free thought is not the same as freedom of speech because even though we can say whatever we want why is that we sometimes get punished for sayng them. In free thought all your doing is writing what you are thinking with out getting hurt, yes it is the freedom speech form in different way but on paper you don't have to be careful what you say, the only person who knows what you are writing is yourself unless of course you tell someone else. However it may seem though as freedom of speech is very useful , yet it's really not, when people start complaining to police officers in a foul language , people tend to get them selves into trouble. So now if it was so free, why is that some people get into trouble.  Although I do remember during the Socratic seminar when we were talking about giving up private information during a national crisis, I would think that people who wrote in journals should be careful because even though it's free thought people may end up in trouble either way it would have been said. So I guess maybe free thought is a bit similar to freedom of speech.