Abstract
What we are looking for is equanimity, is equality, is balance. What we have gotten is one-sidedness and raunch and filth. Now there are standards for clean air and there are standards for clean water and they are far short of toxicity. The Environmental Protection Agency standards for clean water, as I have read them, in many cases fall short of toxicity. In other words, you can still drink the water. You might get sick but you will not die. And yet Nat and the other free speech purists want to pump, or allow to be pumped, garbage that erodes the moral fiber of the country. I take my trash out to the curb twice a week. I have a right as a taxpaying citizen not to have it pumped unexpectedly into my house. I say that as a journalist, and I say that as a defender of the first amendment, and I say that as a taxpayer, and I say that as a person who is concerned about the unravelling of the social fabric. Where is the leadership in America that we used to have that was unafraid to express these thoughts?
Recommended Citation
Hentoff, Nat and Thomas, Cal
(1987)
"That Wide Open, Robust First Amendment-TheBoundaries of Free Speech: A Debate,"
Utah Law Review: Vol. 1987:
No.
4, Article 8.
Available at:
https://dc.law.utah.edu/ulr/vol1987/iss4/8