There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech

Abstract

We are in an era when much of what passes for debate is merely moral posturing. We see traditional family values versus the cultural elite, and free speech versus censorship. We hear reflexive name-calling--the terms "liberal" and "politically correct" are used with as much dismissive scorn by the right as "reactionary" and "fascinst" are by the left. Amid this controversy, Stanley Fish has emerged as a brilliantly original critic of the culture at large, praised and pilloried as a vigorous debunker of the pieties of both the left and the right. His mission is not to win the cultural wars that preoccupy the nation's attention, but rather to redefine the terms of the battle.