You Can't Always Say What You Want: The Paradox of Free Speech

The freedom to think what you want and to say what you think has always generated a pushback of regulation and censorship. This raises the thorny question: to what extent does free speech actually endanger speech protection? This book examines today's calls for speech legislation and places it into historical perspective, using fascinating examples from the past 200 years, to explain the historical context of laws regulating speech. Over time, the freedom to speak has grown, the ways in which we communicate have evolved due to technology, and our ideas about speech protection have been challenged as a result. Now more than ever, we are living in a free speech paradox: powerful speakers weaponize their rights in order to silence those less-powerful speakers who oppose them. By understanding how this situation has developed, we can stand up to these threats to the freedom of speech.

• Places key present-day concerns about free speech and speech regulation in a historical setting to reveal the ways that the past is prelude to the present
• A study of the protections and limitations placed on political speech, strong language, threatening words, 'foreign' language, and compelled speech, as well as a look at some current dangers to protecting speech in liberal democracies going forward
• Explores issues between the First and Second Amendments; the right to free speech and the right to bear arms