Is the act of shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater protected speech?
Surely there should be some limits on what constitutes protected speech.
The source of that quote was a war-time judge who used that analogy in his ruling in 1919 against people handing out anti-war flyers. A ruling that was overturned in 1969.
It was precedent for 50 years.
That precedent died 56 years ago. It's been dead for longer than it even existed.
Strawman. That is not speech in the same way that yelling or crying is not free speech.
The first one is the same strawman. Making the word milk a trigger mustn't milk illegal.
Anti-war protests were what was meant by "shouting fire in a theater". That's what our government was trying to ban.
P.S. I won't engage further with people clearly not arguing in good faith.
Speech communicates ideas. It is mostly opinions. If you state something as fact, when it isn't, it is libel. As such, saying "there is a fire" in the theater is not speech, it is an exclamation.
If you aren't for free speech, then yes, yawning is speech.
As for that "shall not be infringed" wording that is in the Constitution, there's a whole lot of sophistic, intellectually dishonest ideological rhetoric around it. The historical record shows clearly the Founders did not mean by their language what many people today insist that it means--for instance, they passed a number of gun laws restricting their use, and the original draft of the 2A contained a conscientious objector clause because, as the opening phrase indicates, "keep and bear arms" at that time referred to military use (and "arms" included armor and other tools of war; it was not a synonym for "firearms"). And some of the modern claims are absurd lies, such as that the 2A was intended to give citizens the means to overthrow the government, or that "well-regulated" doesn't mean what it does and did mean. George Washington was dismayed by the Articles of Confederation not giving him the power to put down Shay's Rebellion ("Let us have a government by which our lives, liberties, and properties will be secured"), and one of his first acts after the Constitution was ratified was to use the militia to put down the Whiskeytown rebellion.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/06/26/conservati...