The First Amendment may seem invulnerable, because it's been around more than 200 years, but in fact it is constantly under attack.
As Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas said, "Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us."
Every year, there are dozens of challenges to books across the country because someone finds something offensive. We've all had the experience of discovering something in a publication we don't like. That doesn't mean we should move to ban it.
Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., said, "If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable."
It's instructive to view the long list of books that someone, at one time or another, thought should be banned. They include James Baldwin's "Go Tell It on the Mountain," William Golding's "Lord of the Flies," Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird," Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five," William Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night," John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath," Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" and William Faulkner's "As I Lay Dying."
All are now considered literary classics. And the list goes on. Dictionaries have been banned. In one of the most famous cases, a court ordered The New York Times not to publish "the Pentagon Papers," which exposed government lies during the Vietnam War. Happily, the Supreme Court reversed the order.
Honestly, there are some books that probably should be banned. Child pornography and bomb- building manuals come to mind. But it's a short list, and we should be very cautious before adding to it.
