Can we finally kill the meme about shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theatre?

[intaglio]

91. How do you know "this happens"?

Can you provide any evidence to support your contention apart from anecdote? As I say, how is it that a man shouting fire can raise a panic when a fire alarm cannot?

As to repercussions of speech ...
Is "We should murder those people" permitted to be said?

How about "I'll kill you for that!"?

Or what about "the mentally unsuitable must be kept from owning guns at all costs,"?

The first seems to be a direct threat, but say it is a sports fan about an opposing team? The second was a threat - to me by my sigoth after a particularly bad pun. As for the third well I've seen DUers and others who want gun control post what, in essence, is the same thought.

Now try, imagining the first said by a member of Stormfront. That is hate speech and should be taken as incitement to kill and can be prosecuted as incitement to kill; but should sports fans also be restricted from using those words? As for the second imagine it is being said to you by George Zimmerman, that puts you in fear of your life and he should be charged with isssuing threats; but should my lady be charged? The third, well very similar things were said by the German authorities back in the 1930s - about the Jews, the Slavs and the Roma; if an Illinois Nazi says it then at the very least he or she should be put on a watch list for inciting racial hatred but should a DUer be charged with inciting hatred of the mentally ill?

There is another legal truism - "Hard cases make bad law,"

I said in the earlier posts that I do not like where the logic of Hitchens' case leads, which is that all speech should be unfettered and that only the effects of such speech can be charged. The context of his argument was the appalling blasphemy laws proposed for the UK. The problem is that you have to start legislating against words. There are certain words I loathe, racial and sexual slurs amongst, them but I do not think you can ban the use of words.