If our 1st Amendment were not in place, what would civil discourse look like? Perhaps applications to assemble registered with governmental bodies? And, if you were brave enough to bring together a crowd, perhaps passing your intended message through the censorship board for approval prior to speaking your message aloud? Perhaps running the risk of offending ruling elites with your message to the point where they impose military force under marshal law salving elite egos offended by words where force was needed to maintain a pecking order unnatural from the start.

The above questions are not too far fetch as this was the tenure and tone of France before their bloody revolution. It was the French who inspired Thomas Jefferson to relate and lobby James Madison adding 10 simple changes to a Constitution that, until the moment that those changes were adopted, left out the majority of American citizens from the franchise.

Madison and Jefferson argued that humans are inclined towards civility. It is oppressive regimes that insight citizens to enter into a state of nature beyond the civility we seek naturally. Written norms codify civil parameters of conduct. Yet, unwritten norms exist all the while scribes write. Societies seek to preserve resources while avoiding oppressive regimes. Natural Law and the Laws of Man were all the rage in Enlightenment America and Europe but, it was a rehashing of the old axiom where "a government that governs least governs best."

No ox likes the yoke but, make the yoke too tight and the ox won't pull.

Is Lakewood tightening the yoke on free speech? Do we not have enough rules to govern conduct in a civil society? Have not norms shifted away from controversy where even rational thoughts have no purchase?

Lakewood need not tighten rules governing speech lest she drive her citizens to rebel. Laws are designed to encourage most desirable behavior but, in a civil society are we not already so inclined?