Waubonsee Community College

Free speech for me--but not for thee, how the American left and right relentlessly censor each other, Nat Hentoff

eng

Includes index

index present

non fiction

Free speech for me--but not for thee

25410523

Nat Hentoff

how the American left and right relentlessly censor each other

For years now, Nat Hentoff has been the best-known lay guardian of the magnificent spirit and letter of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. His principled advocacy of free expression for all seems to be needed more than ever today, at a time of appalling assaults on expression not only by traditional opponents on the political right - those offended by what they consider obscene or radical or otherwise taboo - but also from the left - radical feminists calling for the suppression of pornography, members of minorities banning language they consider psychologically damaging, and various other proponents of so-called political correctness. These more recently minted censors are now to be found within such former bastions of free speech as the universities and even the American Civil Liberties Union. This urgently important book is not a mere collection of legal cases; neither is it a history of free expression or a polemic from either left or right. It is rather a wide-ranging report on - and analysis of - the many kinds of conflicts throughout our country between the illusion that this is a land of unfettered free speech and the reality when that illusion is acted upon. It is a book of many stories - of the continuing efforts to deprive students of Mark Twain's masterpiece, Huckleberry Finn, and of attempts to deprive other students of the right not to read books that offend them; of the well-intentioned rulings that result in speech codes and loyalty oaths; of the wide-spread lack of understanding, over the years, of such basic concepts as the marketplace of ideas and of the overriding value of untrammeled speech. Free Speech for Me - But Not for Thee is a book about fear, duplicity, some courage, a lot of hypocrisy, and a good deal of irony. It is a book of dramatic confrontations, of people acting, for better or for worse, on one of the most important of our domestic battlefields. And above all, it presents hopeful, practical suggestions for ways toward saving perhaps the most fragile of our cherished freedoms

The right to read a book with "niggers" in it -- The right not to read a book with whores in it -- The thought police, with the very best of intentions -- The education of Yale in the glories of free speech -- The pall of orthodoxy on the nation's campuses -- Speech wars among women -- Law schools that require loyalty oaths -- Sweet land of liberty -- When decent people try to ban speech for the common good -- The dangerous free marketplace of ideas -- Obscenity, and how it did in Lenny Bruce -- The gospel according to Catharine MacKinnon -- Bringing the First Amendment (live!) into the schools