THE SHORT LIFE & CURIOUS DEATH OF FREE SPEECH IN AMERICA

A concise study of how free speech has changed throughout America's history.

Cose has had a remarkably distinguished career: Newsweek columnist and contributing editor, New York Daily News editorial page chief, fellow at the Gannett Center for Media Studies at Columbia University, and inaugural writer-in-residence at the ACLU, among other positions. His latest book is a cogent, well-informed analysis of the vexed problem of free speech. The freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment, writes the author, was crafted by “frustrated and exhausted men” who believed that “in the competition of ideas, good ideas generally crowd out bad.” Within a decade, however, the Alien and Sedition Act curtailed speech attacking the government; Cose cites many more subsequent cases when courts have ruled on “the question of what is acceptable and what is not, what speech merits protection and what speech deserves punishment.” There has never been a time, he writes, without constraints on speech. The author examines many impediments to free speech, such as voter suppression; the Citizens United decision; and the Electoral College and the Senate, both resulting from the founders’ suspicion of direct democracy. Cose also considers free speech protests on college campuses, suggesting that students need instruction in critical thinking in order to evaluate information and misinformation. The author is deeply troubled by dialogue “dominated by the likes of Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, and other apps that specialize in bursts of short, superficial communication.” The nation’s founders had no foresight to know that the First Amendment, “which was designed to enable the people to speak truth to power—would be hijacked by hatemongers, propagandists, and opportunists more interested in despoiling democracy and degrading debate than in ensuring that a diverse nation speaks in harmony.” When “lies swaddled in bigotry” dominate political dialogue, the fantasy of free speech, and our “absolutist illusions” about the founders’ intentions, has become pernicious.

A knowledgeable and timely perspective on the current fraught state of democracy.