Thane Rosenbaum is the author of the new book Saving Free Speech...from Itself. His many other books include Payback and The Myth of Moral Justice, and his work has appeared in a variety of publications, including The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. He is a Distinguished University Professor at Touro College and a legal analyst for CBS News Radio.
Q: Why did you decide to write this book?
A: I have been a law professor for most of my professional
life, and I have always been astounded by the abusive liberties taken under the
guise of free speech, the way we weaponize speech against fellow citizens.
No other Western democracy allows speech to be used in this way.
It was always clear to me that marching neo-Nazis in front
of Holocaust survivors or burning crosses on the lawns of African-Americans
could not possibly have been what the Founding Fathers had in mind.
Q: You write, “The truth is, speech should not be entirely
free.” What limits would you place on it?
A: Speech that causes harm should not be protected under the
First Amendment.
I am not talking about insulting or offensive speech. I
am talking about speech that causes harm to another human being--degrading and
humiliating speech that makes them feel fearful and threatens the dignity
and equality that is promised to citizens of our country.
And with advances in neuroscience, the consequential harm
from free speech is now verifiable. We always knew, intuitively, that the
nursery rhyme, "Sticks and stones . . . " was wrong. Names
do, indeed, hurt.
Q: How should hate speech be defined and dealt with?
A: It's not really that difficult. Singling people out
and targeting them because of their race, religion, sexual orientation and
nationality, resulting in harm to both mind and body, is a pretty good working
definition of hate speech.
Juries are more capable of assessing the severity of such
assaults than they are equipped to determine the severity of a slip and fall.
Q: What do you see looking ahead when it comes to attitudes
toward free speech?
A: Clearly we are reaching the tipping point on the way in
which the Internet, largely unregulated in the United States, can be used to
recruit and indoctrinate terrorists, and teach them how to make bombs in their
kitchens.
This is yet another area in which other Western democracies
look at the United States and wonder why we believe that free speech liberties
should trample over the rights and safety of others who wish to be protected
from the weaponization of the First Amendment.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: A new novel.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: Yes, give this book a chance. Just read it. We live
in our sequestered beliefs, imprisoned by confirmation biases, refusing to take
in a different perspective.
This book is not an attack against the First
Amendment. I would say that it is an act of rescue, because the way we
have interpreted the Free Speech Clause since the 1960s is profoundly misguided
and flatly wrong.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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