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Executive Times |
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2008 Book Reviews |
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Freedom
for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment by
Anthony Lewis |
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Rating: |
*** |
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(Recommended) |
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Click
on title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Liberty The
scope of liberty provided for citizens under the first amendment has been
interpreted in different ways over its two hundred year life. Anthony Lewis
has written a fine book about this history titled, Freedom
for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment. The title
captures the current interpretation of the speech that is guaranteed by this
amendment. It was refreshing to read about how past attempts to abridge this
right were thwarted by Supreme Court actions. Here’s an excerpt, from the
beginning of Chapter 12, “Freedom of Thought,” pp. 183-185: The freedom of speech and press
promised by the First Amendment is not only external but internal: not only
"freedom of expression" but "freedom of thought." The
latter phrase was used as shorthand for America's promise even before the Constitution.
A few weeks after the Declaration of Independence was issued in 1776, Samuel
Adams, John's cousin, the fiery orator whose speeches helped to set off the
Revolution, told an audience in Philadelphia: "Driven from every corner
of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters
of conscience direct their course to this happy country for their last
asylum." Why do we want freedom of thought,
of speech and press? The reasons have been canvassed by philosophers and
judges and professors. Professor Zechariah Chafee Jr., whose writing on freedom
of speech so influenced Justice Holmes, divided the subject into two large
categories. "The First Amendment," he wrote, "protects two
kinds of interests in free speech. There is an individual interest, the need
of many men to express their opinions on matters vital to them if life is to
be worth living, and a social interest in the attainment of truth. . . .
" Through a long history,
individuals have struggled against repressive forces to express themselves.
Their need to speak, as Chafee put it, may have been scientific in origin, or
literary, or political. Galileo wanted to publish what he had proved by
observation: that the earth moved around the sun. He was finally silenced by
the repressive arm of the Catholic hierarchy at the time, the Inquisition.
(The story is movingly told in Bertolt Brecht's play Galileo.) Boris
Pasternak, after years of silence during Stalin's terror in the Soviet Union,
wrote Doctor Zhivago, managed to have it published abroad, and won the
Nobel Prize. But even after Stalin's death, official pressure forced him to
renounce his acceptance of the prize. Anita Whitney rebelled against her socially
prominent family and courted danger by helping to found the Communist Labor
Party of California. Her criminal conviction evoked Justice Brandeis's great
statement on free speech. Perhaps there is something
especially American about the need for self-expression if life is to be worth
living, as Chafee put it. Albert Einstein used the same phrase in describing
what he found when he came to the United States. "From what I have seen
of Americans," he wrote in 1944, "I think that life would not be
worth living without this freedom of self-expression." The social interest in freedom
of thought has been put in many different ways, most prominently in what
Chafee called the interest in the attainment of truth. John Stuart Mill, in
his "On Liberty" in 1859, laid the philosophical groundwork. He
argued that a suppressed opinion may contain a whole or partial truth that
society needs. Even a false belief is valuable, he argued, because the
process of debate about it may test and confirm the truth of the opposing
view. Justice Holmes gave powerful
expression to Mill's argument in his Abrams dissent in 1919: Men may
come to believe, he wrote, "that the ultimate good desired is better
reached by free trade in ideas—that the best test of truth is the power of
the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market."
(The phrase "marketplace of ideas" is often used as if it were
Holmes's, but he did not exactly say that. Professor Vincent Blasi traced the
phrase and found its first use in a letter to the editor of the New York
Times from David M. Newbold in 1936.) Unlike
many advocates of free speech as a search engine for truth, Holmes was really
prepared to risk severe consequences. Professor Blasi put it: Holmes,
the old soldier and proud Darwinist, thought that one of the valuable
functions of dissenting speech, including speech that advocates violent
revolution, is its capacity to generate some of the grievances, aspirations
and mobilizations that force political adaptation and transformation....
Probably the most energizing contribution that the freedom of speech can
make is simply to leave people free to follow their political thoughts
wherever they might lead—free, that is, to think the unthinkable regarding
political loyalty, consent, obedience and violence. Any
citizen who becomes incensed by the exercise of freedom of speech in the form
of thoughts with which one disagrees, will especially appreciate the wisdom
of Freedom
for the Thought That We Hate. As we borrow from Voltaire’s Law and Politics, “I disapprove of
what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.” Steve
Hopkins, April 21, 2008 |
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The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the May 2008 issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Freedom for the Thought That We
Hate.htm For Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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