2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
What an important book!, December 5, 2009
This review is from: Present Dangers: Rediscovering the First Amendment (Paperback)
This book was originally issued under the title "No Liberty for License: The Forgotten Logic of the First Amendment." Because the first of its three sections (on revolutionary groups) was so prescient in light of 9/11, it was reissued by the publisher under the new title "Present Dangers" with a new Introduction by the author. Look "No Liberty for License" up in amazon.com and you can click into that first edition of the book and read some of it (see the chapter titles, index, etc.).
"Present Dangers" other reviewer is frighteningly offbase -- one can understand by the frenzied speciousness and scatter-shot nature of his review how little he comprehended the originality and importance of Prof. Lowenthal's work -- Prof. L is Jewish by the way, no Christian conspiracy here! The other reviewer tells you not to read it!!! That's openmindedness for you! He wants to save you from maybe turning out to be *gasp* conservative in viewpoint! As Leo Strauss (David Lowenthal was his student) put it in 1963, regarding Western culture: "Rome is burning" -- I would say what Prof. Lowenthal explores in this book is ways in which the flames have been fanned by badly educated Supreme Court Justices.
Here is "Archimedes Tritium's" excellent review of the original book, "No Liberty for License" from amazon.com from July 9, 2000:
ARCHIMEDES TRITIUM:
The author beautifully demonstrates the intepretation of the US Constitution in modern times is contrary to that of its original intent. Well written and accessible to those without legal background, though extensively referenced.
He further shows that the original intent is superior politically, logically and morally to what has replaced it. That the current interpretation that has replaced it, due to its internal contradictions, must disrupt in time, taking any government based on it down with it.
The most fascinating point of the book, perhaps, is where the author shows the exact point in 1919 where the Supreme Court first lost touch with Constitution. Then again, in 1925, when it solidified that in a ruling written by Holmes and Brandeis:
"If in the long run the beliefs expressed in proletarian dictatorship are destined to be accepted by the dominant forces of the community, the only meaning of freedom speech is that they should be given their chance and have their way."
It was with this statement that US Constitution, as designed by the founding fathers, being based on centuries of experience and articulated in part by John Locke, was instead replaced by one based on John Stuart Mills and Charles Darwin.
Instead of the original intent of allowing citizens to protect themselves from those who seek to strip them of their inalienable rights (liberty as "We the People"), the courts adopted a position that supresses that, stating that our original constitutional democracy is only a "fighting faith" and cannot be held as deserving protection from other "fighting faiths", even if the people loath them and believe them destructive to representative government.
These poisonous seeds are buried in history but have been blooming throughout the century, as judges draw on precedence and their own personal cultural background as isolated legal elites.
The people who designed the US government and those who lived in it for the first 140 years would find the present situation a bizarre distortion almost beyond belief and rationality. Certainly not sustainable and actually the opposite of what was intended, achieving and surpassing the very European decadence they designed to prevent.
Here in LA, I've been vexed to go to the US Post Office and see the parking lots stuffed with pornographic literature blowing all over the place while children praying in school is criminalized. A demented society indeed. This book traces the legal development of the insanity.
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1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Just, terrible..., November 5, 2008
This review is from: Present Dangers: Rediscovering the First Amendment (Paperback)
This book rejects everyone who has ever considered the first amendment since the founders and framers of the constitution. It does so intentionally for the purpose of trying to get to its "true meaning." The problem with this plan lies in the Authors inability to parse fact from propaganda. Contained within the book are bold statements asserting that the founding fathers intended America to be a Christian Nation; premarital sex destroying love, marriage, and the very foundation of society; and speech critical of the government was never intended to be protected. The most disturbing part is that only some of the assertions appear to come from being misinformed on the topic (such as describing a jihad as a holy war to the death) or that the founders were Christians. Many of his contentions actually appear to be based on some perverse reasoning.
Therein lies the greatest exception I take in the book. The arguments formed in it are not made by predicate logic or using the most general terms possible. The arguments in the book instead are based on Anecdote, described in prose, used to further the points he supports. He then goes beyond that to convolute the words of people who have disagreed with his assertions to attempt to demonstrate concurrence (for example, last I checked, Jefferson was against the idea of using religion to justify law). He goes so far reaching in these manipulations as to alter his diction to obscure the views of his critics based on the tendency for people to skip words they do not immediately recognize.
At the end of this review it may seem as though I merely strongly disagree with his opinions and approach. While I do disagree, I typically enjoy hearing well formed arguments challenging my beliefs. The arguments presented here on the other hand, are so thoroughly warped that it is difficult to even imagine. His use of the words in the constitution to attempt to justify the exact opposite of what those very words say within paragraphs of one another, is so audacious as to be unbelievable. I strongly recommend avoiding this book at all costs. If you are in a class where this is required, do not even entertain remaining in the class unless you are wholly unfamiliar with any of the philosophers he mentions and juris prudence in the United States and plan on merely regurgitating information. The only other reason I can fathom reading this book is if you wish to lose some faith in humanity.
To put it simply: there is a reason the only "Expert" review is from a friend who helped him develop it.
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