Free Speech for Me - But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other

Free Speech for Me - But Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other

Freedom of speech -- United States
Censorship -- United States

This 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.

Nat Hentoff

HarperCollins Publishers

1992

Book, physical

English