Holmes Jr's opinion was overturned by Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969, which limited the scope of banned speech to that which would be directed to and likely to incite imminent lawless action (e.g. a riot).

The problem with your position, is since we aren't dealing with 'what did happen' but with 'what could have happened' it becomes an ambiguous and potentially abusive provision - highly subjective to personal biases.

These are all laws meant to protect us from each other. I suppose you could argue with any of these on principle, but it's a pretty standard part of our social contract now.

I would personally argue that the society we live in has reached a level where we are incapable of being fully informed about all the risks, requirements and possibilities. We have to own cars to buy groceries, go to work and raise our kids because neighborhood grocery stores and schools are no more. We can't all be expected to be experts on HVAC and electrical because we've spent the totality of our existence in highly specialized training for whatever it is we do. We live in an incredibly close quarters society, and history has shown us that vaccinations are almost a must.

Making laws based on what could happen just seems like common sense given these realities.

Yes - but we also don't have an amendment which says:

"Congress shall make no law abridging my right to drive fast"

Preservation of free-speech is specially important in a way that the speed-limit on the highway is not. So I would say these aren't analogous applications of bias.

> I would personally argue that the society we live in has reached a level where we are incapable of being fully informed about all the risks, requirements and possibilities. We have to own cars to buy groceries, go to work and raise our kids because neighborhood grocery stores and schools are no more. We can't all be expected to be experts on HVAC and electrical because we've spent the totality of our existence in highly specialized training for whatever it is we do. We live in an incredibly close quarters society, and history has shown us that vaccinations are almost a must. Making laws based on what could happen just seems like common sense given these realities.

You could also go further e.g. "I would personally argue that the society we live in has reached a level where we are incapable of being fully informed about all the risks, requirements and possibilities. Anti-vaccination speech should be outlawed, the practicants of such speech are a menace to public health, their children and others children."

Putting speech into the category of acceptable bias without effect, is a dangerous path..

Indeed, laws like trademark and truth in advertising are exactly what you are suggesting could happen. They are laws that protect consumers from potential harm created by false claims. It's not a limitation on political speech, but fact. I don't think anti-vaccination speech being illegal is actually too terribly unreasonable. I guess in my day to day existence I would rather live in a culture where I'm generally protected from potential harms so I can go about my day with less worry. Could those limitations reach a point where I find them unreasonable? Surely they have and surely it has happened in the history of the United States, but I think it's a testament to the culture and its institutions that we've rebalanced when we've gone too far one direction.

That would let you ban publication of a rigorous, well-done study that found actual harm from some vaccinations. That is not a good path to be on.

If you want to get unsubstantiated and speculative anti-vaccination speech outlawed, you need to convince a majority of people to do it. In such a case, it seems likely that the medical community would also contain a majority convinced of the worthlessness of anti-vaccination speech, thus relying on them to substantiate it would be pointless.

In general, what you're describing is tyranny of the majority that a constitution is meant to prevent. Even if we had the omniscience to determine that vaccinations are now perfectly safe and give brilliant results, outlawing speech against them makes them a protected category, which is ripe for abuse. The argument will shift from pro/anti vaccination to "this is not a real vaccination", subverting whatever your intention of outlawing the speech was. Meanwhile, the things billed under 'vaccination' will slowly morph as time advances, as people fight to classify more and more medicine under it, to protect their drugs from criticism.

This is exactly the thing that happens already under every exception to the First Amendment in the US, and why courts would repeatedly narrow down each exception, refusing to expand it further. Are you prepared to add this to the list of things to be eternally vigilant about? How confident are you that the courts will continue to defend narrow limitations when given an ever-growing list of them? Most importantly, do you think your new law will have any useful effect, given that people are notoriously good at subverting narrowly-crafted censorship, and broad censorship always has unintentional side-effects?

In fact, I would say the expectation exists that the government will do that. We have come to take for granted that the products we buy are safe and the claims we see are true, precisely because we accept that it's reasonable to expect speech to be limited in this way.

Regardless, I don't want to lose the thread. Anti-vaccination is not a commercial enterprise, no one is making false claims and selling them (well, some people are, but not as a product). The example was fair, and I can acknowledge that I may be wrong on that.

But I stand by that we can, and should, be allowed to limit speech to prevent harm, just like we limit all sorts of other things for the same reason, including things that are constitutionally protected.

And yet, so many Western countries disagree about what it actually means and have different laws. There's differences in places and time. Cinema and movies weren't covered by 1st Amendment for decades in the USA.

For cinema in the USA, a 9-0 Supreme Court case in 1915 found that movies weren't covered by the First Amendment. That was overturned in 1952 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Burstyn,_Inc._v._Wilson )

As soon as you get - e.g. - Snowden or Manning, the speech suddenly stops being free (of consequences) even though it's in the public interest.

We're certainly not fine with free politics. Politics currently is still stuck in a medieval mode where it's entirely about about profit and power, not representation.

The establishment in most countries will fight to the death to keep it that way.

So if speech is harmful it can be banned? That's an interesting new exemption.

Banning holocaust denial is the national equivalent of recoiling one's hand after touching a hot stove. Most Germans really, really do not want to go back there.

These are very basic and very old exemptions.

Personally, I think shouting 'fire' in a theater should be 'free and legal' for a few key reasons.

First, it allows the morality of individuals in a society, not the morality of a few in power, to be the consequences of another's action. Second, if a bigot refuses service, shout's slurs, or yells 'fire' in a theater, it may hurt my feelings, but you bet your ass I want that information. By silencing people whose morals i disagree with, you don't change their morality. You only shield it from me, so now I don't know about it.

If you shout fire in a crowded theater (in which there is no fire), and the crowd pushes and shoves to race to the exit (if it can happen at a Walmart on Black Friday it can happen in a theater where people don't want to burn to death), and people get injured or even killed, forget about morals, you could be liable for manslaughter.

Bad speech can be countered by MORE speech. Ban on speech cannot.

Did you honestly believe I meant to say that people should not be warned about an actual fire?

Regardless, you certainly do have the First Amendment right to shout fire in a crowded theater (the quote everybody refers is bad law), the government will not actively try to prevent it; you just may have to deal with the legal consequences of using your right in such a way.