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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   34374 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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What always gets me about that stupid "fire in a crowded theater" cliché is that it's:

  1. From a case about distributing flyers about resisting the draft. Shouting "fire" here is resisting being sent to die in the trenches of WW1, which was not deemed protected because: "when a nation is at war, many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right."
  2. Has been overruled by Brandenburg for more than half a century
  3. Has nothing to do with free speech and equates unpopular politics with disorderly conduct

It's a terrible argument from bad precedent used to justify tyranny, and somehow it all seems to be okay to hide behind because it's a memorable maxim by a nominally progressive jurist who later actually changed his mind and supported broader 1a jurisprudence.

I hate it, when someone repeats it I know they either have no historical context for it or loathe Free Speech as a concept and are just trying to make that palatable.

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