West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette

This was written in 1943. It's a shame it seems to have been forgotten...

Government of limited power need not be anemic government. Assurance that rights are secure tends to diminish fear and jealousy of strong government, and by making us feel safe to live under it makes for its better support. Without promise of a limited Bill of Rights it is doubtful if our Consitiution could have mustered enough strength to enable its ratification. To enfore those rights today is not to choose weak government over strong government. It is only to adhere as a mean of strength to individual freedom of mind in preference to officially disciplined uniformity for which history indicates a disappointing and disasterous end...

Struggles to coerce uniformity of sentiment in support of some end thought essential to their time and country have been waged by many good as well as by evil men. ... As first and moderate methods to attain unity have failed, those bent on its accompliment must resort to an every-increasing severity. As governmental pressure towards unity becomes greater, so strife becomes more bitter as to whose unity it shall be. ... Ultimate fultility of such attempts to compel coherence is the lesson every such effort from the Roman drive to stamp out Christianity as a disturber of its pagan unity, the Inquisition, as a means to religious and dynastic unity, the Siberian exiles as a means to Russian unity, down to the the fast failing efforts of out present totalitarian enemies. Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard. ...

(W)e apply aply the limitations of the Consititution with no fear that freedom to be intellectually and spiritually diverse or even contrary will disintegrate the social organization. ... When they are so harmless to others or to the State as those we deal with here, the price is not too great. But freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.

If there is any fixed star in our consitutional constellation, is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us...

Those are the thoughts of Justice Robert Jackson and the United States Supreme Court. And they will get you a lot more than just coffee.