[<< | Prev | Index | Next | >>]

Monday, June 15, 2020

FIRE!

To those who keep justifying censorship by citing yelling "fire" in a crowded theater: Have you actually thought through your own example? Seems to me if we actually censored that (we don't--how would we?), eventually a bunch of people would needlessly die in a fire. You really need to find a better example/justification.

There is one documented case of a person shouting "Fire!" in a theater, when there truly was no fire. It was at the Mount Morris Theatre in New York's Harlem neighborhood in 1884. In this case, no panic ensued.

In contrast, in the Brooklyn Theatre fire of 1876, the actors initially falsely claimed that the fire was part of the performance, in an attempt to avoid a panic. However, this delayed the evacuation and made the resulting panic far more severe. *

[<< | Prev | Index | Next | >>]