In this regard, persons confronted with Cohen's jacket were in a quite different posture than, say, those subjected to the raucous emissions of sound trucks blaring outside their residences. An advocate can therefore argue that setting the current precedent will lead to further decisions which will eventually result in either complete anarchy or the total elimination of free speech. This argument can generally be made on either side of any free speech issue. But it works best when the intermediate steps between the present decision and the ultimate ruin are carefully described, and the causes that make the slip down the slope inevitable carefully articulated. In other words, it works best when it's true.
Most people find little or no value in such speech.
But it is precisely this unpopular speech that most needs protecting under the First Amendment. For if the guarantees of the First Amendment were reserved for expression that more than a 'few of us' would take up arms to defend, then the right of free expression would be defined and circumscribed by current popular opinion. The guarantees of the Bill of Rights were designed to protect against precisely such majoritarian limitations on individual liberty. But were the First Amendment limited to such discourse, our freedom would be sterile indeed. If there is some alternative remedy to the problem the regulation is trying to solve, that remedy should be chosen instead.