The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties Essay -- Rights Freedom Essays

The growing holy terror To Civil Liberties The United States has long been respected for the principled thoroughness with which it has upheld the decently to granting immunity of speech embodied in the first amendment to the constitution. We owe percent of our own freedom of speech to the Americans who have upheld freedom of speech on the Internet against pressure from other countries who are angry that their citizens can weep up forms of speech banned at home. The US consistently refuses to business firm international agreements that would infringe the purity of its own constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech. It is olibanum distressing to read in David Bernsteins excellent book how anti-discrimination laws are being used to undermine civil liberties, such as the freedom of speech, in the very home of liberty itself. The US courts have in the past upheld freedom of speech, even where it powerfulness seem to encourage disgust or subversion, but they have allowed ant i-discrimination laws to over-rule freedom of speech. Once again the knife thrust for equality is revealed as the greatest enemy of individual freedom. One of the some striking examples of this is the substantial numbers of individuals who have been sacked (and also in consequence lost their medical care) because their employers lawyers were afraid that remarks that these individuals had made might lead to some other indignant and affronted employee suing the employer for allowing them to be subjected to a distant work environment. A member of a legally inner(a) minority might well then be awarded vast alter for some trivial remark. In consequence employers now even spy on conversations and e-mails between two friendly consenting employees lest they contain a comment which might be unco... ...ights, but she was only awarded one sawbuck plus her costs. It sums up the priorities of PC AmSoc America. A trivial anti- discrimination consider is worth a million times as much as f reedom of speech and expression. David Bernstein is to be congratulated on so clearly, vividly, analytically and accurately showing seriousness of these new threats to free speech and civil liberties in the US. The Cato Institute also deserves credit for publishing the book since in Bernsteins words authors who take politically incorrect positions . . . face a oddly difficult time finding publishers among leading trade presses (p. ix). Cato at to the lowest degree is still the land of the free and the home of the brave. You Cant Say That The Growing Threat To Civil Liberties From Antidiscrimination Laws Washington, DC Cato Institute, 180pp., ISBN 1 930 865 538, $20.00 (hb), 2003