Freedom of speech : mightier than the sword

306 Pages·2015·3.09 MB·English

by  Shipler

Praise for David K. Shipler’s
Freedom of Speech
“Shipler writes with crisp, concise earnestness….This book is a pleasure to
read both for Shipler’s skill but also because he tells the stories of people
bound up in these issues.”
—Providence Journal
“[Shipler] gets it: The First Amendment is only a starting point. Free
expression is a noble ideal that creates continual tension in our
society….Shipler’s view of America’s free speech landscape is nuanced and
complex. Yes, people say awful things, and sometimes seek to squelch
expression with which they disagree. But in his book, good ideas and
sentiments hold their own against bad and offensive ones.”
—The Progressive
“Chilling….For Shipler, it’s essential that we find a middle ground where we
can hear one another, where we can debate and disagree with respect….We
must participate in the conversation about who we are and who we want to
be. That it is unruly, disturbing, scary even, goes without saying; this is also
why it’s necessary.”
—Los Angeles Times
“By providing intimate portraits of the lives of those who dare to speak
against the odds, Shipler enables us to see the human element behind free
expression….Shipler pricks the conscience of readers who refrain from telling
the truth, or whose selective listening has lead them to disrespect and
delegitimize those with whom they disagree.”
—National Catholic Reporter
“Good stories, great interviews, and a potent plea on behalf of vigilant
listening.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A broad and deep look at free speech….A fascinating look at one of our
fundamental rights.”
—Booklist
“David Shipler reminds us in this important book that sometimes we have to
listen to things we don’t want to hear. But without freedom of speech, there
can be no dialogue, and without dialogue, there can be no democracy.
Freedom of Speech is a glorious celebration of its own subject!”
—Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed
“At a time when the First Amendment is under siege as never before in our
lifetimes, David Shipler, one of the nation’s great journalists, reminds us
what we are in danger of losing. His terrific, timely new book, Freedom of
Speech: Mightier Than the Sword, takes us on a tour—sometimes shocking,
often infuriating, always enlightening—of America’s free-speech battlefields.”
—Philip Shenon, author of A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of
the Kennedy Assassination
“Shipler tells real, often Orwellian stories of ordinary people—government
workers, teachers, librarians, and playwrights—who risk everything to push
the free-speech envelope, while challenging us to consider difficult cases
when money buys speech and poverty promotes silence. At a time when many
civil libertarians despair at the loss of freedom and privacy on so many fronts,
Freedom of Speech reveals conflicts that must be understood if free speech is
to prevail.”
—Barbara Jones, former director, American Library Association Office for
Intellectual Freedom
“The freedom of speech enjoyed by American citizens is unique in all the
world. In this brilliantly insightful and incisive book, David Shipler explores
the many and varied facets of our nation’s complex, extraordinary, and
fascinating relationship with our most precious freedom.”
—Geoffrey R. Stone, author of Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime
David K. Shipler
Freedom of Speech
David K. Shipler reported for The New York Times from 1966 to 1988 in New
York, Saigon, Moscow, Jerusalem, and Washington, D.C. He is the author of
six previous books, including the bestsellers Russia and The Working Poor,
as well as Arab and Jew, which won the Pulitzer Prize. He has been a guest
scholar at the Brookings Institution and a senior associate at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace, and has taught at Princeton, American
University, and Dartmouth. He writes online at The Shipler Report.
shiplerreport.​blogspot.​com
ALSO BY DAVID K. SHIPLER
Rights at Risk:
The Limits of Liberty in Modern America
The Rights of the People:
How Our Search for Safety Invades Our Liberties
The Working Poor: Invisible in America
A Country of Strangers: Blacks and Whites in America
Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land
Russia: Broken Idols, Solemn Dreams

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, APRIL 2016
Copyright © 2015, 2016 by David K. Shipler Living Trust
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random
House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin
Random House Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by
Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, in 2015.
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published
material:
Graham Swift: Excerpts from Waterland, copyright © 1983 by Graham Swift. Reprint by permission of
Graham Swift.
Caryl Churchill: Excerpts from Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza, copyright © 2009 by Caryl
Churchill. Reprinted by permission of Caryl Churchill.
Ari Roth and Theater J: Excerpt from the program notes for Andy and the Shadows, 2013. Reprinted by
permission of Ari Roth and Theater J.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Shipler, David K.
Freedom of speech : mightier than the sword / David K. Shipler.
pages cm
1. Freedom of speech—United States. 2. United States. Constitution.
1st Amendment. I. Title.
KF4772.s55 2015 323.44′30973—DC23 2014032127
Vintage Books Trade Paperback ISBN 9780307947611
eBook ISBN 9781101874691
Author photograph © Deborah I. Shipler
Cover design by Chip Kidd
Cover photograph © Ann Little / Alamy
www.​vintagebooks.​com
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FOR THE THREE GENERATIONS:
Debby
Jonathan, Glynis, Laura, Matt, Michael, and Sweta
Madison, Ethan, Benjamin, Kalpana, Dylan, and Priya
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Also by David K. Shipler
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
The Landscape: Zones of Silence, Zones of Speech
PART I Books
1. Trouble in River City
2. The Discerning Audience
3. Fear of Reading
PART II Secrets
4. The Loneliness of Thomas Tamm
5. Thomas Drake and Friends
6. The New War Correspondents
PART III Stereotypes
7. The Cultural Limits of Bigotry
8. The Protocols of the Elders of Islam
PART IV Politics
9. Money Is Speech, Poverty Is Silence
10. True Believers
PART V Plays
11. Red Lines and Black Lists
12. Post-traumatic Syndrome of Another Kind
13. The Drama Behind the Drama
Afterword and Acknowledgments
Notes
Introduction
The listener is everything in telling a story.
—CHAYA ROTH
F
reedom of speech implies the freedom to hear. Without willing listeners,
brilliant thinkers cannot educate, brave orators cannot mobilize, daring
leakers cannot reform. The unseen play, the unread book, the ignored appeal,
fall silently away. The unheard lament flutters and fails.
So ideas do not have to be censored to die. Soviet dissidents used to say
they were “writing for the drawer,” where manuscripts were forced to lie in
darkness. But in today’s flagrantly open America, unwelcome facts and
opinions disappear in other ways. They are concealed in the confusing clatter
of argument. They are hidden by a lack of funding. They are confined to
enclaves of narrow interests.
It may be that political debate in the United States has never been as
boisterous, irreverent, and downright nasty as in the early twenty-first
century. Yet speakers and audiences are not all listening seriously to one
another. They assemble in a public square that is honeycombed with comfort
zones where citizens cluster around the viewpoints that suit them, separated
by soundproof barriers of disagreement. Many Americans do not want to
consider what is being said beyond their walls.
Antonin Scalia, the conservative Supreme Court justice, made the point
when he told a New York magazine interviewer that his preferred newspapers
were the conservative Washington Times and The Wall Street Journal. He
didn’t read The New York Times and had canceled his subscription to The
Washington Post because of “the treatment of almost any conservative
issue,” he said. “It was slanted and often nasty. And, you know, why should I
get upset every morning? I don’t think I’m the only one. I think they lost
subscriptions partly because they became so shrilly, shrilly liberal.”
The balkanization is facilitated by transformed demographics and moral
values that leave some groups, especially white conservatives, with a novel
sense of alienation from the mainstream. Those who want certain books out
of classrooms feel marginalized and disempowered by school systems. Those