Schenck is an abomination of a case and clearly was decided on the side of fascism and repression of utterly harmless free speech. The problem is that no one s

Schenck is an abomination of a case and clearly was decided on the side of fascism and repression of utterly harmless free speech. The problem is that no one shouts fire in a crowded theatre, and anyone who did would rightly be indicted on a number of charges not pertaining to speech. The Schenck case had nothing whatsoever to do with theatres or people wrongly alerting theatre goers to a fire. The metaphor was used by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who was an embarrassment to the country, to stop people from criticizing US involvement in WWI, claiming that criticism of US imperialism was identical to shouting fire, and was a clear and present danger, which is obvious bunk to everyone as it is not the same thing at all. And here we are again. Someone is saying unpopular things and the reaction is to claim censorship is justified because there is a theatre that is not on fire somewhere. Let me be very clear. There is no theatre. There is no fire. There is no one shouting fire in a theatre. And if there was someone shouting fire in a fireless theatre the result would be that the other patrons would tell the person yelling to shut up and sit down. It is time to stop defending the abomination that is the Schenck decision and the lunatic that was Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes." - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., in Buck vs Bell, ruling that the government has a right to sterilize women against their will for the same reason the government has a right to vaccinate people against their will. The decision upheld Laughlin's Model Law, which was then used as a model document for the Law for Protection Against Genetically Defective Offspring, passed in 1933 in the German Republic, allowing forced sterilizations of those thought defective there as well.