First of all, the limits of rights occurs in any culture in a cultural and historical context. Slopes can be more slippery in some places than others. In the

First of all, the limits of rights occurs in any culture in a cultural and historical context. Slopes can be more slippery in some places than others. In the US, you have tremendous emphasis on free speech not because free speech is necessarily good but because the restrictions on the government address past excesses in governmental action. So the historical context is important here. A century ago, you would probably have been right. This speech has some significant bad tendencies that the government has a legitimate interest in regulating. If the government had been responsible in using that power, that might be the test today. Unfortunately the trouble started in WWI, when sedition prosecutions were brought against individuals for encouraging people not to report for the draft. While the prosecutions were ultimately upheld, they made members of the court nervous. As a result the court, in Schenk v. United States, tightened up the standard a bit, to "clear and present danger" and including the famous bit about shouting fire in a crowded theater and laughing as people are trampled. I think your hypothetical would be harder to justify under this new standard (in 1917) because it isn't clear that the danger is either clear or present. However, given prosecutions of alleged Communists in the 1920's I think it would stick. The prosecutions of alleged communism, and the political antics surrounding them (HUAC, etc), eventually lead the courts to conclude that the basis of American democracy required a free marketplace of ideas. This eventually lead to the standard becoming a lot more tight in Yates v. United States (holding that urging people to accept the moral necessity of eventual violent overthrow of the government was protected speech, and not the equivalent of raising an army to accomplish such an end). In essence saying that workers must at some point unite and overthrow the government did not pose a clear or present danger but rather an unclear, future danger. The danger in this context is not that a sincere opinion will be restrained but that the government will use its force to create apparent consensus for its preferred policies, and therefore deny the people a real voice in the matter. This is a structural, functional problem, and perhaps a less centralized, more local, more responsible and inclusive government might not have somewhere else.