The First Amendment of the American Constitution: A Fundamental Protection of Free Speech or ‘A Clear and Present Danger’ to Liberal Democracy?

A ‘Clear and Present Danger’?

“The life of the law has not been logic; it has been experience.”
― Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

For me as a citizen of the old colonial Empire that was rightly rejected by the American colonists in an insurgency in the late eighteenth century, it has always struck me as unsound that offensive and racist language and acts of intimidation, threatening behaviour and violence that are motivated by racism, bigoted white supremacy, antisemitism and hatred for the Other, have been allowed to take place upon the streets of American towns and cities under protection of the American Constitution.

Marches and demonstrations by the KKK and neo-Nazi groups have been allowed in the 4 years of the Trump presidency (and overtly supported by the Administration), that have from a British and European perspective seemed utterly idiosyncratic and bordering on the bizarre, given the history of the United States in World War Two, the history of slavery and the ongoing fight for African-American civil rights. In Europe similar marches would have been allowed, but with strict regulations in place and with a large police presence at all times to avert confrontation. However, the…