Freedom of speech

Freedom of speech.                       -----------------------------------David Marsters, a retired police officer, was fed up with Barack Obama. 'One man ruined the whole country,' Marsters declared by phone a few days after being interrogated by the Secret Service. 'I voted for him the first time. He’s conned everybody in the nation that he’s gonna change this or change that'.”

--from FREEDOM OF SPEECH: Mightier Than the Sword by David K. Shipler

 

Here David K. Shipler turns his incisive reporting to a critical American ideal: freedom of speech. Anchored in personal stories—sometimes shocking, sometimes absurd, sometimes dishearteningly familiar—Shipler’s investigations of the cultural limits on both expression and the willingness to listen build to expose troubling instabilities in the very foundations of our democracy. Focusing on recent free speech controversies across the nation, Shipler maps a rapidly shifting topography of political and cultural norms: parents in Michigan rallying to teachers vilified for their reading lists; conservative ministers risking their churches’ tax-exempt status to preach politics from the pulpit; national security reporters using techniques more common in dictatorships to avoid leak prosecution; a Washington, D.C., Jewish theater’s struggle for creative control in the face of protests targeting productions critical of Israel; history teachers in Texas quietly bypassing a reactionary curriculum to give students access to unapproved perspectives; the mixed blessings of the Internet as a forum for dialogue about race.