But, of course, if we were to allow any right without exception, then we would soon find that we have no rights. Not only would the limitless interpretation of one right eventually decimate other rights but, apart from that, it would also undermine society's solvency; hence its ability to enforce even the expanded right.
Rights, as ideas, have no utility. They must be layered onto the substrate of a functioning society. Hence, there has always been work towards achieving balance, as every right must be circumscribed to some degree.
This is why we have courts, reasonableness standards, etc.
So, sure, we could interpret these as "contradictions", but that becomes a meaningless characterization in any practical sense.
The intention was not to enshrine a right to smut in the constitution, nor was it to legalize criminal harassment, threats, or defamation. That's something that was read into it by judicial activism.
The phrase "judicial activism" has a bit of a pejorative tone to it, but I'm not sure that we can identify a single right enshrined in the Constitution that hasn't been so challenged or invoked in ways not initially "intended". There's no practical way to avoid that, and I don't think we'd want to in any case.
But, this was anticipated and we have a system for adjudicating such questions.
So, I don't take exception to the idea that these things can be considered, tested and decided. In fact, I take exception to those who pretend that's not the case or that we have and must blindly enforce 1A and other rights.
Yes, there is. There is, in fact, a fundamental contradiction between the idea that the State can declare content “illegal” and “free speech”.
The obscenity exception turns free speech from “the government cannot ban content” to “the government cannot ban content unless both the judge [0] and a sufficiently large portion of the public sufficiently dislikes it [1] and it has to do with sex and/or excretion.”
That's not to say the founders wouldn't have agreed with it; the founders agreed that hereditary slavery had no conflict with the right of persona not to have life or liberty deprived without due process of law, so as a whole thet had pretty big blind spots in their conception of rights.
[0] the official prong being that the work lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value
[1] that the average member of the community would find it appeals to a prurient interest.