There are two dimensions here: when is speech protected, and what is speech? If speech is just speech, it's easy to give it very broad protections. But we also consider physical actions to be speech (e.g. protesting). Clearly you can't allow people to engage in any action as long as they call it free expression. So it's a "nothing" proposition, where the government can ban any sort of protest activity.
I think it's relatively easy to distinguish "speech" from "speech plus other action," such as protesting. Even someone who supported free speech and a person's right to protest wouldn't likely support them protesting on their front lawn because other rights besides freedom of speech exist (such as property rights).
I don't think it's controversial in Western societies that freedom of expression, especially in spoken or written form, is one of the most important rights of a free society, and as such is worthy of protection. Other actions associated with that speech may not be protected, so we need to distinguish between them.
Is it? Publishing an anti-government article in a newspaper, something we think as the core of free speech, is actually speech (the writing) + action (publishing). So is putting anything up on facebook or sending it over the intertubes. You can apply a binary protection to speech, but that just moves the battleground to defining "speech" versus "not speech."
The U.S. approach is a pretty good one. It defines "speech" as almost anything expressive, and focuses the analysis instead on whether any restraints on speech involve the content of the speech. Protesting is protected in the U.S., which it would not be under a "speech" versus "speech plus other action" dichotomy. The attended activity may be limited, but not based on the content of the speech. Hate speech laws have been repeatedly ruled unconstitutional, because they ban particular types of expression based on content.
> I don't think it's controversial in Western societies that freedom of expression, especially in spoken or written form, is one of the most important rights of a free society, and as such is worthy of protection.
I'll say that even given only my real world experience with hearing local opinion on the matter, there is in fact quite a controversy around the concept. This isn't even taking into account the similar opinions coming through in forms of media that aren't real-time, in-person conversation.
That freedom of expression is even an important principle is not something where there's clear-cut agreement. There exists dissent aplenty.
Even spoken words can be magnified til they cause physical damage. In general, it is the information itself that must be held immune from restriction, not the physical expression via sound, light, or other physical medium.
Also, I'm not as clear yet on my views of the rights of protesting and assembly. I consider these important, but I have not yet thought through them and they may not need to be so binary in nature.
