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Freedom of speech is over in the U.S.
By Kent R. Kroeger (February 23,2021)
OK, maybe speech and press freedoms aren’t ‘over,’ but they are damn well in decline. And this is despite the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment being quite clear on the extent the government can limit free speech and the press:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Unlike the Second Amendment where its use of a prefatory clause (“A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…”) all but guarantees a variety of legal interpretations, the First Amendment appears cut-and-dried — Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.
In practice, a more temperate view on the First Amendment has evolved in the courts that, while acknowledging the government is highly constricted in what it can do to limit speech, allows some government-imposed limits on speech. For one, you can’t put lives in danger by yelling ‘Fire!” in a crowded theater, to loosely paraphrase the opinion of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
