The Short Life and Curious Death of Free Speech in America

Written by Ellis Cose

Narrated by Korey Jackson

Named one of Newsweek’s ""25 Must-Read Fall Fiction and Nonfiction Books to Escape the Chaos of 2020""

The critically acclaimed journalist and bestselling author of The Rage of a Privileged Class explores one of the most essential rights in America—free speech—and reveals how it is crumbling under the combined weight of polarization, technology, money and systematized lying in this concise yet powerful and timely book.

Free speech has long been one of American's most revered freedoms. Yet now, more than ever, free speech is reshaping America’s social and political landscape even as it is coming under attack. Bestselling author and critically acclaimed journalist Ellis Cose wades into the debate to reveal how this Constitutional right has been coopted by the wealthy and politically corrupt. 

It is no coincidence that historically huge disparities in income have occurred at times when moneyed interests increasingly control political dialogue. Over the past four years, Donald Trump’s accusations of “fake news,” the free use of negative language against minority groups, “cancel culture,” and blatant xenophobia have caused Americans to question how far First Amendment protections can—and should—go.

Cose offers an eye-opening wholly original examination of the state of free speech in America today, litigating ideas that touch on every American’s life. Social media meant to bring us closer, has become a widespread disseminator of false information keeping people of differing opinions and political parties at odds. The nation—and world—watches in shock as white nationalism rises, race and gender-based violence spreads, and voter suppression widens. The problem, Cose makes clear, is that ordinary individuals have virtually no voice at all. He looks at the danger of hyper-partisanship and how the discriminatory structures that determine representation in the Senate and the electoral college threaten the very concept of democracy. He argues that the safeguards built into the Constitution to protect free speech and democracy have instead become instruments of suppression by an unfairly empowered political minority.

But we can take our rights back, he reminds us. Analyzing the experiences of other countries, weaving landmark court cases together with a critical look at contemporary applications, and invoking the lessons of history, including the Great Migration, Cose sheds much-needed light on this cornerstone of American culture and offers a clarion call for activism and change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperAudio
• Release date: Sep 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9780062999740

Ellis Cose

Ellis Cose was a longtime columnist and contributing editor for Newsweek magazine, the former chairman of the editorial board of the New York Daily News, and is the creator and director of Renewing American Democracy, an initiative of the University of Southern California, Northwestern, and Long Island University. He began his journalism career as a weekly columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and has been a contributor and press critic for Time magazine, president and chief executive officer of the Institute for Journalism Education, and columnist and chief writer on management and workplace issues for USA Today. Cose has appeared on the Today show, Nightline, Dateline, ABC World News, Good Morning America, and a variety of other nationally televised and local programs. He has received fellowships or individual grants from the Ford Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the University of California, among others, and has won numerous journalism awards. Cose is the author of The Short Life and Curious Death of Free Speech in America, Bone to Pick, The Envy of the World, the bestselling The Rage of a Privileged Class, and several other books.  

Reviews for The Short Life and Curious Death of Free Speech in America

[Keith James · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

What a disgraceful book, an eulogy to censorship under the guise of all the usual made-up excuses.

[DAvid · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

A fanciful read but not to be taken as a fact filled book. It learns one way' away form the truth. Good for escapism but not good to learn from.

[davidwineberg · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

No one makes as much fuss over freedom of speech as Americans. It is precious, protected, and built right into the Bill of Rights. But not only is it not real freedom of speech, the first amendment itself was all but ignored until just 60 years ago. Ellis Cose explores the ups and downs of speech in The Short Life and Curious Death of Free Speech in America.Cose examines the Framers’ thinking behind the amendment, the battle over the details, and what sorts of compromises it represents. He shows how Congress has completely ignored it and passed laws all but totally crippling it. Hard to imagine today, but people were jailed for 10 years for uttering what was taken as an insult. Today we see the president himself trying to muzzle the media, calling journalists “the enemy of the people”, while throwing a fit when Twitter flags his lies for possible falsehoods.This is actually the true nature of freedom of speech. It is a continual contradiction, impossibility and source of conflict, as the book shows repeatedly. Lately, the president been stepping out even further, threatening to bring in the military to quell freedom of speech by other than his supporters. He openly calls for “total domination”. Freedom of speech is reserved for the faithful and fawning.It is an age-old fault in government. Cose cites Erwin Chemerinsky: “For over 200 years, repression has been the response to threats to security. In hindsight, every such instance was clearly a grave error that restricted our most precious freedoms for no apparent gain.” But no one ever learns.It’s not just politics either. Cose says as of early 2020, a Columbia University–based center looking at the “silencing” of science has counted more than four hundred separate instances since Trump’s election that meet its criteria—meaning “any action that has the effect of restricting or prohibiting scientific research, education, or discussion, or the publication or use of scientific information.” The book takes an unexpected turn to the electoral system, which consumes about of third of its content. It’s not till it’s all done that Cose quotes some experts who maintain that voting can be “considered a form of speech,” making it relevant. Cose fixates on the inequality of votes, where the more rural, the more a vote counts. He says no one would ever consider a system where an urban voter gets one vote, a suburban one gets two, and rural voters gets three. But that’s what is operational today iin the USA.The distortions from that and the bizarre electoral college system, which has simply never worked as intended, brings Cose to conclude: “The reality that a majority of the country’s population is represented by just 18 senators—that is driving concerns about the Senate’s ability to function as a representative body in a changing America.” For Eric Orts it is “now possible for senators representing only one-fifth of the population to pass a bill or confirm a Supreme Court justice.” So voting itself is no longer an expression speech, I guess.Later, back in free speech mode, Cose touches on the innumerable arguments over social media and hate. There are unending questions, and no answers. Americans don’t like Muslims self-radicalizing on the internet, but somehow see no problem with extreme right wing American neo-nazis doing the same. No one has a solution that maintains total freedom of speech.It is a very short book that breaks no new ground, but Cose makes what there is easily digestible and useful.For Cose “There are moments when I wonder whether some future historian will look back on one of the greatest civilizations in the history of the world and lament that, even as we debated the importance of free speech, we forgot that free speech was supposed to have a purpose, that it was supposed to be a means of defending our freedoms and our republic—not of facilitating our self-destruction. In losing sight of that idea, we may be unwittingly killing free speech, not in any literal sense but as an ideal, even as we abandon the fantasy that embracing free speech was necessarily tantamount to safeguarding this country’s soul. “David Wineberg