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BOOK REVIEW: FREEDOM FOR THE THOUGHT THAT WE HATE: A BIOGRAPHY OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT By Anthony Lewis, BasicBooks, 2007. 240 pages. Paperback edition, Basic Books, 2009.
Anthony Lewis's Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: a Biography of the First Amendment is one of the tamest books ever written about a bold idea. Hardly a trite liberal piety goes unexpressed; nary a predictable inspiring excerpt from Holmes or Brandeis goes unexcerpted. The First Amendment is unique among bold ideas in that it was inserted into our Constitution at least in part for the bracing purpose of protecting and inspiring other bold ideas. If ideas had feelings the First Amendment would take umbrage at being the subject of such an unoriginal, under-researched, unadventurous and incomplete history of its existence. For all its many statements of tribute to the "courage" of journalists and the "bold judicial decisions" ' that expanded First Amendment protections, this book never shows bravery enough to take even a single position that wouldn't elicit a round of perfunctory nods among the New York Times editorial board.
Anthony Lewis is one of the most established, and establishment, journalists and public intellectuals in the United States. He wrote for the New York Times for approximately fifty years and has twice been given the Pulitzer Prize, including once (in 1963) for his writing on the Supreme Court. He lectured at Harvard from 1974-1989 and has been the James Madison Visiting Professor of First Amendment Issues at Columbia University's Journalism school since 1983. Only an author with such a perfect resume could turn the history of an idea so profound and inspiring into such a repository of safe opinions about very familiar cases. A true "biography" of the First Amendment is either a work of serious and comprehensive scholarship or it is nothing. While the title suggests a much fuller treatment, this effort, a short selection of arbitrarily cherry-picked and underdeveloped highlights from the amendment's first 220 years, carries few facts and ideas unavailable elsewhere.
Noam Chomsky has referred to Lewis as the quintessential American liberal author and as representative of the leftmost boundary of permissible mainstream political and intellectual opinion.2 This assertion perhaps gains some currency with Freedom for the Thought That We Hate....