Documents of Freedom

September 1, 2003 8:31 PM

"Documents of Freedom"is a nine-part series of articles in Salon "highlighting the historic essays, speeches and court rulings that have advanced the cause of free speech and other civil liberties." Each article focuses on one document, offering commentary and a link to the document. The latest piece is on freedom of the press in the days of Benjamin Franklin and his grandson. The article on John Stuart Mill was discussed here.
posted by homunculus (4 comments total)

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posted by Space Coyote at 8:43 PM on September 1, 2003

While how people try to grasp freedom is always a worthy exhibit, I look forward to the day when someone methodically analyzes "How freedom is taken away."

Not just in Nazi Germany, but in the US, there is a crying need to examine what America was versus what America has evolved into.

They could start with the grand losses of freedom taken away with the stroke of the pen: The Whiskey Rebellion, The Civil War, WWI, The New Deal, WWII, The Homeland Security Act.

But then you could flush it out with an analysis of the loss of freedom through systematic gradualism. Everything from Prohibition to The War on Drugs (a volume, there) and Abortion, are not just their "enabling acts", but the countless legal decisions, State and Federal regulations, and Executive Orders that whittle away at freedom.

And what of the organizations that are devoted to taking away freedom? Anti-drinking, anti-smoking, anti-gun, anti-porn, religious, safety, racist, environmental, social, left-wing and right-wing.
posted by kablam at 6:33 AM on September 2, 2003

National Exchange Club's Freedom Shrine [.pdf, see p. 3]
posted by ZenMasterThis at 9:10 AM on September 2, 2003

"Printers" -- as publishers were called, since most of them combined editorial duties with the grueling, dirty and literally stinking job of working the hand press (the sheepskin balls used to ink the type were soaked in urine and wrung out by hand)

Great, now my mental picture of Benjamin Franklin will be of a man who's hands stink of urine after handling sheep-balls.

Sorry couldn't resist.
posted by skallas at 1:41 AM on September 3, 2003