Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Free For All : Defending Liberty in America Today by Wendy Kaminer ISBN: 0-8070-4411-3 Publisher: Beacon Press Pub. Date: 15 September, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.75 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: True Civil Libertarian
Comment: In this book, Wendy Kaminer, lawyer and civil libertarian, compiles many of her essays from her column in the American Prospect about censorship, religious freedom, women's rights, anti-individualism, rights of the accused, and post 9-11 curtailings of civil liberties in the United States. Kaminer makes a clear distinction between civil liberties, which are the laws protecting citizens from unjust government power and control, and civil rights, in which government power is used to protect the rights of a marginalized or minority population from other citizen groups. Kaminer criticizes both the right and the left in her attempts to find an appropriate balance, and she leans strongly toward individual freedoms except where clear, unambiguous discrimination is taking place.
This thoughtful and articulate book is particularly easy to read in chunks because each concise essay is only a few pages long. Kaminer's discussions of patriotic descent are strong and well-stated: "When you force children to salute the flag and recite the 'Pledge of Allegiance' you don't teach then to exercise freedom so much as you accustom them to the imposition of political orthodoxies." It is clear that she believes it is important not to violate fundamental principles of freedom, such as those defined in the Bill of Rights, even if doing so may result in short-term political gains: "...right and left, people who find themselves in possessions of power tend to resist restraints upon its use. ...What distinguishes a civil libertarian is a focus on preserving fair process rather than obtaining particular results." Kaminer takes to heart Voltaire's words: "I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it," and I'm sure she would support the ACLU's 1978 court case protecting the free speech of a new-Nazi group and Noam Chomsky's defense of Faurisson's right to question or deny the Holocaust.
While Kaminer's criticisms all are well-stated and have merit, her lack of analysis or outright dismissal of the role of power, agency, and systematic biases is at times unsatisfying. For example, while she supports reproductive rights, she criticizes the Hill vs. Colorado ruling establishing "buffer-zones" around abortion clinics where "even peaceful antiabortion protests are prohibited." While her arguments about "silencing political speech" and valuing the "imagined right not to be offended over a right to give offense" are legitimatize, women seeking abortion information face far more than offensive language, often facing threats of physical violence, vigilante retribution, and public exposure, resulting in essentially restricted access. To give her due credit, Kaminer does write that "an unregulated marketplace inevitably exploits the most powerless members of society and produces gross inequalities of wealth that effectively prevent many people from enjoying the rights to which they're entitled," and it would be difficult to provide an appropriate depth of discussion about these dynamics while maintaining brevity, focus and accessibility in her essays.
http://www.theonion.com/onion3211/acludefends.html
Rating: 5
Summary: Timely collection of essays in defense of the Bill of Rights
Comment: Social conservatives, Stalinist feminists, and political correct Democrats (not to mention the Christian soldiers of the Bush administration) will find no comfort here. Wendy Kaminer is going to come down on the side of individual freedom against governmental power whatever the issue at hand.
In this collection of essays, mostly from her column in The American Prospect, Kaminer looks at issues ranging from anti-terrorist encroachments on civil liberties to anti-abortion protests, and invariably comes down on the side of individual liberty, even when she has to share close quarters with the likes of NAMBLA or "pro-fetal life" abortion clinic demonstrators. Her justification is a fine restatement of the civil libertarian position: "If the First Amendment only protected sensible speech, we'd inhabit a very quiet nation indeed." (p. 80)
Because she writes with passion and wit, and because now more than at any recent period in our nation's history, there is the danger of "An Imperial Presidency" (p. 13), we need her and others like her--whether we agree completely with them or not--as a counter to the anti-civil libertarian designs of Ashcroft, Rumsfeld and Bush. Kaminer represents in these pages the loyal opposition that largely went into hiding after September 11th.
Her main concern is for the health of the Bill of Rights, which suffered from cardiac arrest as the Twin Towers fell. Kaminer sees the resulting struggle between the Bush administration's desire to increase its power, and the individual's desire for privacy and due process, as a struggle between our collective need for security and our desire for freedom. When people are in fear they will let go of some of their liberties in order to feel secure. Consequently today is a time of particular danger because many Americans are understandably afraid.
Kaminer also addresses free speech on high school campuses, media censorship, abortion rights, victim's and defendant's rights, gay rights, Bush's faith-based program, and other cutting edge issues. Her style is readable, thoughtful and penetrating. She comes from a position of considerable authority as a social critic, a lawyer, and best-seller author (e.g., I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional). She knows the facts and she knows the law, but more than anything she knows how to express what she feels in an engaging manner. Consider how she makes this very delicate, but true, observation: "I don't imagine that he welcomed it, but September 11 was not a bad day politically for George Bush."
Or, note her observation that we don't need a first Amendment to protect popular, inoffensive speech. We need it to protect speech that a "Lynn Cheney or Joe Lieberman" might consider demeaning and degrading. She adds, "Censorship campaigns often begin with a drive to protect children (or women), but rarely end there." (p. 40) My only nitpick is that Kaminer didn't devote some space to the farcical, hypocritical, and disastrous "war on drugs" that is also eroding our liberties. Maybe that will be the subject of her next book.
Rating: 5
Summary: Rigorous, but witty, civil libertarian
Comment: Threats to civil liberties are greater than ever since September 11, 2001. Due process rights are the most obvious casualties, but privacy, church-state separation, and other civil rights are being eroded, particularly for groups outside the mainstream.
Wendy Kaminer's latest book, "Free For All: Defending Liberty in America Today", is therefore extremely timely and relevant. Kaminer is a lawyer, author, and social critic, whose previous books include "Sleeping With Extraterrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and the Perils of Piety", and "I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional: The Recovery Movement and Other Self-Help Fashions". "Free For All" is a collection of her essays on civil liberties from the past several years, both before and after 9/11. Most of the pieces appeared in "The American Prospect", though a few are included from other publications such as "Free Inquiry" and "Dissent".
The topics she addresses include freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to privacy, defendant's rights, women's rights, and many related issues. A number of themes crop up repeatedly, including the following: When people favor giving up rights, they usually have in mind other people's rights. Civil libertarianism requires applying the Golden Rule to people you dislike. Civil liberties (freedom to X) often conflict with civil rights (freedom from X). Threats to civil liberties tend to come from those who want people to "be good," whether according to Christian morality on the right, or political correctness on the left. We should be especially wary of expansions of government power, especially prosecutorial power, which are likely to lead to erosion of individual freedom. And sadly, Americans tend to pay only lip service to liberties that are supposedly inalienable.
Kaminer is politically liberal, but she does not shy away from positions that make liberals queasy, because they are required by a strict civil libertarian interpretation of the Constitution. Some of her possibly controversial positions include:
* Free speech rights of abortion protesters must be protected. Furthermore, trying to shield abortion patients from protest undermines the feminist position that women can and should make autonomous decisions about abortion.
* Groups such as the Boy Scouts do have the right to discriminate against gays and atheists (and face the social consequences of doing so). Their rights to free speech and free association trump the desire to enforce equal treatment by non-government groups.
* Evangelism in schools (that is not endorsed by the school) should not be prohibited in the name of protecting children. "Sectarian religious groups that seek access to public schools are unlikely to compare themselves to pornographers, but they do rely on First Amendment rights." (p. 101) In both situations, it is the job of parents, not the state, to protect children.
These essays are necessarily snapshots in time. Most of the pre-9/11 pieces have been rewritten in the past tense, to reflect the changing face of civil liberties since that date. Two pre-9/11 essays are left in the present tense, to underscore the fact that civil libertarians were already alarmed well before the terrorist attacks. Many of the restrictions currently being used by the Bush/Ashcroft regime were enabled by the Counter-Terrorism Act of 1996. The attacks of 9/11 simply provided the first opportunity to apply them on a wide and well-publicized scale. The "USA PATRIOT" Act is merely icing on the cake.
"Free For All" is well worth reading if you interested in civil liberties in general. It provides a wide-ranging, thorough, and entertaining exploration of current issues. If eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, then Wendy Kaminer is standing guard, and letting us know that all is not well.
 |
Title: Sleeping With Extra-Terrestrials : The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety by Wendy Kaminer ISBN: 0679758860 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 10 October, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
 |
Title: Washington by Meg Greenfield, Katharine Graham, Michael R. Beschloss ISBN: 1586481185 Publisher: PublicAffairs Pub. Date: 02 July, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
 |
Title: Letters to a Young Conservative by Dinesh D'Souza ISBN: 0465017339 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 01 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
 |
Title: Freethinkers : A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby ISBN: 0805074422 Publisher: Metropolitan Books Pub. Date: 05 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
 |
Title: The Sorrows of Empire : Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic [The American Empire Project ] by Chalmers Johnson ISBN: 0805070044 Publisher: Metropolitan Books Pub. Date: 13 January, 2004 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
