John Stuart Mill (JSM) argues the following:

"As soon as any part of a person's conduct affects prejudicially the interests of others, society / government has jurisdiction over it, and the question whether the general welfare will or will not be promoted by interfering with it, becomes open to discussion."

Arguably, JSM contends that when a person's actions lead to the interference of legitimate rights or interests possessed by others, the government is bound to exert some level of control over those damaging activities. While this make sense in theory, it is on some level problematic as government action taken in this wise would invariably infringe on conduct that presumably is protected but has a deleterious impact on others. For example, what if citizen A decided to exercise their free speech and burn an American flag in protest, clearly upsetting and enraging citizen B, a member of the U.S. military.

1. Would the government have the ability to limit the actions of citizen A in order to protect the interests of citizen B and others who are similarly situated in society -- especially if there was a likelihood such action would produce a violent response? (Feel free to consider cases like Texas v. Johnson (1989) and United States v. Eichman (1990) and the 1989 Flag Protection Act, passed by Congress)
2. What about issues related to race, immigration, sexual orientation, gender, religion, physical ability, etc? How do we define the appropriateness of government action to protect the interests of society without a level of infringement on liberty and freedom?