Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., of the U.S. Supreme Court, stated his belief in free speech in a number of court decisions. Describing the test of free speech, he said: “If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought—not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.”—United States v. Schwimmer, 1928.

Few of those demanding unrestricted freedom of speech would disagree with Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who over a half century ago wrote in a famous landmark decision regarding freedom of speech: “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.” The resulting consequences of such an act are obvious. How unreasonable, then, for these same ones to place little or no value on a subsequent sentence of that same decision and act in headstrong defiance of it. “The question in every case,” said Holmes, “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.”