This page should mention the controversy about obscenity and legal issues surrounding it; we could really use a page about it. --Daniel C. Boyer
There are many de facto restrictions on freedom of speech in the United States; so many, in fact, that it can barely be said to exist any more. An example is the very small First Amendment zones to which protestors are restricted at a great distance from "President" Bush or whoever else they are protesting. The existence of First Amendment Zones shows what is the converse, that the First Amendment is only in effect in these tiny little areas. --Daniel C. Boyer
The paragraph about the United States does not define freedom of speech differently than the opening paragraph. However, freedom of speech in the U.S. is not exactly "the right to freely state one's opinions and ideas." Explained more accurately, freedom of speech in the U.S. exists because speech is protected (by the Constitution) from government suppression. Freedom of speech is not protected in the U.S. within private clubs and institutions or necessarily in homes. This article needs to better express this. Kingturtle 07:04 Apr 13, 2003 (UTC)
Should, and how should, claims that (U.S.) state laws providing for involuntary commitment might, but do not necessarily (if diagnosis of the person as "mentally ill" and the upholding of that diagnosis in a court challenge to the commitment, was made solely on the basis of speech or writing, or could not have been made without that speech or writing, clearly the restriction of liberty is based on the speech or writing; the fact that the excuse is that the person is "mentally ill" is not relevant any more than it would be if it were against the law to have seditious thoughts, and if one expressed these thoughts orally or in writing it was "the thoughts" for which one was deprived of liberty, not the speech or writing, regardless that the only way the thoughts could be discovered was the speech or writing -- involuntary commitment laws clearly deprive people of liberty (and that the cases are "civil" does not matter under the due-process standard twice specified in the Constitution, as all that matters is the deprivation of liberty for the hospitalized individual) and restrict "crazy" speech), violate the First Amendment, be mentioned in this article? --Daniel C. Boyer