Milton's Areopagitica

Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

Free speech and dragon's teeth

Goering: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars. Goering: Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. G M Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary, p 278 Entry for April 18th. Da Capo Press 1995,

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater 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. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Scheneck v USA 1919

For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a viol the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive as those fabulous Dragon’s teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. … John Milton, Areopagitica p4 (Noel Douglas reprint)