Free for All: Defending Liberty in America Today

by Wendy Kaminer

Book Overview

A lawyer, social critic, and columnist at The American Prospect, Wendy Kaminer has said that she likes to think words have power but knows they don't cast spells. She argues with her readers and expects them to argue back. Her taste for liberty, her legal training, wit, and innate contrarianism help her elude the usual political labels and inform her writings on censorship, feminism, pop psychology, religion, criminal justice, and a range...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807044113
• ISBN13: 9780807044117
• Release Date: September 2002
• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Highlights the Necessity and Beauty of Liberty!

"Freedom" and "liberty" seem like two of the most over-used and under-appreciated words in our contemporary political vocabulary. Left-wingers might champion the freedom of dissenting speech (or freedom to abort a fetus), while opining about the necessity of hate speech legislation and railing against the right to own a firearm. Right-wingers might champion association rights and freedom of contract, but might rail to the death to regulate 'indecency' and stand opposed to the freedom of gays to marry. As Wendy Kaminer notes several times in this beautiful book, we tend to treat liberty as we do tax loopholes: we only champion the ones we use; to hell with the others. Mrs. Kaminer's book, constructed from essays she has written mainly for The American Spectator magazine, shows that she, unlike most, is not that fickle. The antithesis of the partisan zeolot, Kaminer nobly defends civil liberties and freedoms WHEREVER they need defending. Whether it be defending liberty against the vicious assults they've encountered via the war on terror, or defending the rights of private conservative groups to discriminate against homosexuals if they choose, Mrs. Kaminer consistently champions liberty - everyone's liberty. This book will most probably appeal to two groups - liberals and libertarians. While Mrs. Kaminer certainly approaches issues non-ideologically, she is much harder on right wing attacks liberty (regulating indecency on the internet, opposition to gay marriage and abortion rights, forcing the pledge, etc.) than on left-wing ones (speech codes, push for reparations, etc.) What's more, as a true civil libertarian, Mrs. Kaminer, as often as not, finds herself defending unsavory characters like pornographers, NAMBLA, criminal defendants denied due process rights, and the like - groups that tend to give conservatives more disease than liberals. But far be it from me to generalize; buy the book if you are concerned about liberty, no matter what side you stand on. The only two complaints I have tend to do with the format as a collection of essays. First, most essays here are ridiculously short - averaging about three pages. While this is good if you are a casual reader that might read one or two essays at a time, the more serious reader will find the lack of depth that 3 page essays afford frustrating. Second, as these are essays there is a significant overlap of information from one essay to the next. For instance, the chapter of essays on post-Sept. 11 liberty are well written, but after the first few, the repitition of information gets cumbersome and, to be honest, I started questioning whether i needed to read all of them. All in all, though, this book is a sorely needed, non-partisan, defense of liberty and freedom (and its peicemeal encroachment) in contemporary America. If we ever hope to reverse the trend, journalists like Wendy Kaminer becoems absolutely necessary.

True Civil Libertarian

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 de

Timely collection of essays in defense of the Bill of Rights

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 i

Rigorous, but witty, civil libertarian

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

Equally critical of Left & Right opponents of civil liberty

Thank goodness for Wendy Kaminer. A consistent thinker in the midst of our culture of conflict between fabricated absolutist alternatives.This book is a collection of short essays on the state of American liberties which previously appeared in the "The American Prospect" over the past two years. They have been updated with additional material to confront the issues in civil liberty which have appeared after 9/11.Censorship, religious freedom, women's rights, and homeland security are just some of the topics covered in these bite-size essays. The author's pen spares no sacred cows of either the Right or the Left. The feminist movement's campaign against pornography is vilified with as much fervor as is the conservative effort to criminalize flag burning. Both efforts are attempts at limiting unpopular speech. Kaminer shows them both to be the silly shibboleths of sanctimonious speech suppressors.I don't agree with the author's opinions on every issue covered in the book. Her take on the criminal justice system, immigration, and social equality are a bit too left of center for my tastes. However, I am proud of her right to her opinions and her courage to care about the rights of others with whom she disagrees. If only we could all care with this much eloquence.