David Kennerly 🇺🇦

Err on the side of freedom. Re @Tim_Walz claim that you can't shout "fire" in a theater, here's what SCOTUS Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said in Schenck v. United States (1919): "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. The question in every case is whether 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 that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree." What were the falsely shouted utterances that Justice Holmes’ feared constituted a clear and present danger? They were 15,000 fliers distributed to draft-age men during the First World War that encouraged them to “Assert your rights,” “Do not submit to intimidation,” and “If you do not assert and support your rights, you are helping to deny or disparage rights which it is the solemn duty of all citizens and residents of the United States to retain.” The right to what? Freedom. Freedom from what? Slavery. Slavery? Yes. According to the distributors of the fliers—Charles Schenck and Elizabeth Baer, members of the Executive Committee of the Socialist Party in Philadelphia—military conscription constituted involuntary servitude, which is strictly prohibited by the 13th Amendment: “When you conscript a man and compel him to go abroad to fight against his will, you violate the most sacred right of personal liberty, and substitute for it what Daniel Webster called ‘despotism in its worst form’.” Schenck and Baer elaborated: "A conscript is little better than a convict. He is deprived of his liberty and of his right to think and act as a free man. A conscripted citizen is forced to surrender his right as a citizen and become a subject. He is forced into involuntary servitude. He is deprived of the protection given him by the Constitution of the United States. He is deprived of all freedom of conscience in being forced to kill against his will." For this treasonous act of voicing their opposition to the draft, Schenck and Baer were convicted of violating Section 3 of the 1917 Espionage Act, passed shortly after U.S. entry into the Great War in order to prohibit interference with government recruitment into the armed services, and to prevent insubordination in the military and/or support for enemies of the U.S. Tellingly, as mission creep set in and “clear and present danger” expanded to include speech unrelated to military operations or combatting foreign enemies, Holmes dissented in other cases, reverting to a position of absolute protection for nearly all speech short of that intended to cause criminal harm, concluding that the “marketplace of ideas” of open discussion, debate, and disputation was the best test of their verisimilitude. So...Walz (along with everyone who mindlessly repeats the "fire" line) was wrong. It's a bogus excuse to silence people with whom you disagree. Holmes later wrote: "It is better for those who have unquestioned and almost unlimited power in their hands to err on the side of freedom." Err on the side of freedom.