One of my favorite free speech stories concerns a young man who called me back in my ICLU days, to complain that a local fast-food chain wouldn’t hire him because he was tattooed all over. They found it unappetizing, and worried that customers might also. "Don’t I have a First Amendment right to express myself?" he complained. "Sure." I told him…
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Category Archives: Free Speech
Twinkies & Oliver Stone
If I write a mystery novel in which a murder is committed in a particularly gruesome way, and someone reads that novel and commits a similar crime, am I responsible? If I produce a…
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Intellectual Freedom
Not too long ago, I had a conversation with a librarian involved professionally with issues of intellectual freedom. "Sometimes," she said, "I get so tired of it. I wonder why I continue to fight." I’ve thought about that conversation…
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Remember the Bill of rights?
There I was, in a rocking chair at the nursing home, where one of my grandsons had come to visit me. The discussion turned nostalgic, as we discussed those years, long past, when I had taught college students about the Bill of Rights.
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Burning the House
Filtering Software in Public Libraries…
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