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Thank God your manner of thinking wasn't around during the founding.

I can only imagine how you'd object to patriotic speechmaking from the relative comfort of the Virginia Convention.

"Easy for you to say Mr Henry, its not you risking your neck out on the plains of Boston."

In the 1942 case of 'Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire', the Supreme Court held that so-called "fighting words...which by their very utterance inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace" are not protected by the First Amendment and can be punished. The Court based its decision on the concept that such utterances are of "slight social value as a step to truth."

Thank God your manner of thinking wasn't around during the founding.

It has been my understanding that the Founders conducted all of that work in a gentlemanly fashion, always refraining from personal insult. Read George Washington's comments on gentlemanly behavior. He never cast dispersion upon one's beliefs in an insulting or derrogatory manner. He restricted his comments to logic and law.

The Founders never intended Free Speech to include insults or deformation of character. Free Speech was, in thier view, orderly discussion of any ideas, even if they went against the governemnt. It was never coarse, crude, or insulting. It is not possible to find compromise in governance if arguments are suppressed. Progress is more easily made whenever insults or other diatribe is avoided.

I do fully understand that today's young people have no idea how gentlemanly discourse sounds, or how to conduct it. If you think heaping insults at Muslims is a good use of Free Speech, then please do so. If increasing the risk borne by our troops doesn't bother you, then sleep peacefully. You will wisen as you age.