From one of the most influential journalists of the last half century,
an essential explanation and defense of a foundational American idea:
free speech
More than any other people on earth, we Americans are free to say and
write what we think. The press can air the secrets of government, the
corporate boardroom, or the bedroom with little fear of punishment or
penalty. This extraordinary freedom results not from America's culture
of tolerance, but from fourteen words in the constitution: the free
expression clauses of the First Amendment.
In Freedom for the Thought That We Hate, two-time Pulitzer
Prize-winner Anthony Lewis describes how our free-speech rights were
created in five distinct areas: political speech, artistic expression,
libel, commercial speech, and unusual forms of expression such as
T-shirts and campaign spending. It is a story of hard choices, heroic
judges, and the fascinating and eccentric defendants who forced the
legal system to come face to face with one of America's great founding
ideas.