Free Speech Under Fire

WHEN A BOOK entitled The Case Against Free Speech opens with the claim that “This book is not ANTI-FREE-SPEECH. It is ANTI-THE-CONCEPT-OF-FREE-SPEECH,” you know you’re in for some verbal gymnastics. When it offers a howler like “There is relatively little literature and philosophy on free speech,” you prepare for some pratfalls.

P.E. Moskowitz (who prefers to go by they, them, and their pronouns) is unburdened by an educated understanding of free speech debates or an effort to present a new perspective on them. Moskowitz relies on the familiar illiberal view that free speech is mainly an instrument of the powerful right-wing few, irrelevant at best to the marginalized and powerless many.

Wealth and social standing do, of course, facilitate the meaningful exercise of many rights, including the right to counsel, the right to petition the