Parenting & Family Quote by Cliff Stearns

The line tries to do a very political thing: turn a constitutional principle into a list of scary-sounding carve-outs, then imply the carve-outs are the real story. By leading with “so many exceptions,” Stearns frames free speech not as a broad default with narrow limits, but as a fragile privilege hemmed in by danger. It’s a rhetorical inversion that quietly nudges the audience toward accepting more restrictions, because the exceptions he names are emotionally radioactive.

The chosen examples aren’t neutral legal categories; they’re cultural flashpoints. “Child pornography” is the nuclear option in any civil liberties debate, a near-universal moral revulsion that collapses nuance. “Cross burning” drags in America’s racial terror and lets the speaker sound like he’s defending vulnerable communities while sidestepping the harder First Amendment reality: the Court has often protected even abhorrent expression unless it’s tied to true threats or imminent violence. “Libel” invokes reputational harm and media distrust, a convenient tap into anti-press sentiment. “Fighting words” is a legal term of art, but most listeners hear “speech that starts fights,” not a narrow, shrinking doctrine.

Contextually, this kind of catalog tends to surface when lawmakers want to justify new speech-adjacent controls (on protest, broadcast indecency, online content, campaign speech) without admitting they’re expanding state power. The subtext is: the First Amendment already bends, so it can bend again. It’s effective because it recruits consensus against extreme cases to win permission for contested ones.