Comment by noworriesnate 8 days ago
This is a good question that would require a long debate to answer, but the answer obviously is neither of these two extremes:
- Every entity except the US govt is allowed to enforce consequences for speech
- there should never ever be any consequences for any speech ever
"Fire in a crowded theater" was originally a strawman introduced by the Supreme Court to justify their ruling in Schenck v. United States. To remind, Schenck was a Socialist Party member who was distributing flyers encouraging resistance to the draft during WW1, and was convicted for the same under the Espionage Act of 1917.
SCOTUS affirmed his conviction, saying that "the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils".
Here's the flyer itself, in case you want to read those very dangerous words for yourself: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States#/medi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schenck_v._United_States#/medi...
So, all in all, a good reminder that not only the slippery slope very real, but sometimes it's there from the get go.
It is funny to see this type of comment downthread of a criticism of bothsidesism. You set up a spectrum in which one "extreme" is the status quo of American culture going back generations and the other "extreme" is a seemingly impossible to achieve idea for which I have never seen a single reasonable person advocate. One of those is a lot more extreme than the other. The only reason we are even having this conversation in this thread is because the Trump administration is trying to be more extreme than your first "extreme" by having the US government inflict consequences for speech.
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Fire in a crowded theator is the type of speech often used as an example serious terrorism plans should be stopped before they turn into acts.
i don't know how you enforce the above though.