FREE FOR ALL

Kaminer (Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials, 1999, etc.) makes a strong case for the vibrant protection of constitutional liberties, particularly when perceptions of fear have gripped the citizenry.

“People have a right to their stupidities,” jibes Kaminer as she goes about biting the ankles of those eager to curtail the expression of those stupidities as well as the right of dissent and holding unpopular opinions, our moral right to have moral preferences. In this collection of some four dozen pieces, mostly from the pages of the American Prospect, Kaminer explains her mistrust of government—the reins of power—as essential to maintaining the liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. She is wary when asked by politicians to curtail the rights of others, especially at times of national unease, as in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks. She suggests that we should always ask ourselves why we are assenting to the enhancement of power in individual hands—say, executive power, or, worse yet, committee—at the expense of constitutional rights to all. How will this devolution of responsibility play out in the long run? “Censorship campaigns often begin with a drive to protect children (or women), but they rarely end there,” she says of the movement to curb popular entertainments. She sticks close to our civil liberties and rights, striving for a sense of balance (“For freedom’s sake, we all have to tolerate being vilified, embarrassed, or harassed, but freedom will survive if we acknowledge a right not to be terrorized”) in often tricky terrain like virtual child pornography or the legal difference between the advocacy of unpopular ideas or acts and the incitement of them.

As always, Kaminer urges people to think, to get to the nub (she says of Timothy McVeigh’s closed-circuit TV execution: “Public viewing of executions is less important than public scrutiny of capital cases”), to refuse to be treated like children by a government of power seekers.