Download Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment AudioBook Free
More than any other folks on the planet, Americans are absolve to say and write what they think. The media can air the secrets of the White House, the boardroom, or the bed room with little concern with punishment or penalty. The reason for this extraordinary freedom is not really a superior culture of tolerance, but just 14 words in our most fundamental legal document: the free expression clauses of the First Amendment to the Constitution. In Lewis' telling, the storyplot of how the right of free expression evolved along with our nation makes a compelling case for the adaptability of our own constitution. Although People in america have gleefully and sometimes outrageously exercised their to free speech since prior to the nation's founding, the Supreme Court did not begin to recognize this right until 1919. Liberty of speech and the press as we know it today is astonishingly recent.Anthony Lewis tells us how these rights were created, revealing a story of hard choices, heroic (and some less heroic) judges, and fascinating and eccentric defendants who forced the legal system to come face-to-face with one of America's great founding ideas.
