That gives rise to the fair question of, 'is free speech the only law that exists?' To what extent do all other considerations go by the wayside in order to draw a bright line sanctioning ALL possible expressions of ideas in speech, by definition rendering them immune from any sort of judgement or consequence?

I think there's a fair amount of existing law that's made rather ridiculous by this position. In particular, the whole notion of conspiracy goes out the window when it's by definition not possible to share in responsibility for an act by persuasion. I'm not even sure it's possible to extort: if you can plausibly say you will wreak mayhem on a person for failing to comply, and you do so, and they comply rather than get mayhem wrought upon them, you've got what you want but you have never done more than speak. Your actions have never once crossed the line. The fact that your speech functioned as plausible threats is irrelevant: it was always and only speech, because nobody called you on it.