The Day They Came to Arrest the Book by Nat Hentoff Read Free Book Online

very risky. With everybody constantly doubting and questioning anything they wanted to. Good Lord—sorry, Matt”—he nodded to Griswold—“you could have another revolution with all that freedom. So why did they take that chance?
Because
the one thing they knew for sure was that freedom, real freedom, is always—
always
—the deadliest enemy of tyranny. George Mason believed that, and Jefferson, and Madison.”
    He grabbed for his book, which was sliding down the stand. “One more thing from Justice Black. He was talking about the people I just mentioned, and all the other American revolutionaries who defied King George and the British troops so that they could live in liberty. But again, immediate liberty wasn’t the only thing on their minds. They were convinced that, with all the risks involved, liberty would bring extraordinary advantages to Americans to come.” Dickinson looked down and read:
    “They believed that ‘the ultimate happiness and security of a nation lies in its ability’ “—his voice grew louder and louder—” ‘to explore, to grow, and ceaselessly to adapt itself to new knowledge, born of inquiry, FREE FROM ANY GOVERNMENTAL CONTROL OVER THE MIND AND SPIRIT OF MAN.’ ”
    Dickinson paused to mild applause from most of the students, although Barney and Luke were clapping vigorously, as were the two faculty members.
    “He’s not being very objective,” Nora Baines whispered to Maggie Crowley.
    “Maybe not, but he’s sure being patriotic.” Crowley laughed.
    “Now”—Dickinson threw his paperback on the table. It just missed his water glass, to his surprise and pleasure. “Now, there are a lot of groups going around the country these days trying to destroy that vision—that marvelous vision of a country where individual liberty is so natural a right that it is in the very air the citizens breathe. I shouldn’t say ‘vision’ because, withconstant struggle, we’ve made it real. We
are
free. But if these groups
succeed
, liberty will be only a vision again—just the stuff of dreams.
    “What groups am I talking about?” The young lawyer looked at some notes on the back of an envelope, and then stuffed it back in his pocket. “You can usually recognize them by how they call themselves. MORAL or MORALITY is in there somewhere. Or DECENCY. Or AMERICANISM. And each one of them has a list of things they want changed, you know; but what they really want is to have
everybody thinking the same way
. The way
they
think.”
    “Even if that were true,” Matthew Griswold, from his chair behind the table, said mildly, “what’s wrong with that? Isn’t everybody free in this free country to try to persuade everybody else to his way of thinking?”
    “Of course, Matt,” Dickinson said heartily. “But the people I’m talking about are not content to see if their ideas can prevail in the free marketplace of ideas. They are trying to get GOVERNMENT to
enforce
their notions of morality, of decency, of Americanism. You see, they do indeed believe that individual freedoms are getting out of hand, that they must be controlled. But by whose standards? By
their
standards! And Government will be the policeman to make sure that everybody else falls in line with what these groups want.”
    Griswold was shaking his head while writing some notes.
    “Let me give you some examples of what I mean,” Dickinson said. “A number of these groups are getting school boards to censor books. To throw them right out of classrooms and out of school libraries. And in two cities—Drake, North Dakota, and Warsaw, Indiana—they actually BURNED those books. Like the Nazis did in Germany.
    “And some of these people”—the lawyer took off his suit jacket and tossed it on the table next to the newspapers—“have been pushing hard to get the government to force prayers into public schools. But suppose you don’t want to pray in school? Oh, they say, those students who don’t want to, won’t have to.