Volume 52, Number 4 · March 10, 2005
Bill of Wrongs
By Edmund S. Morgan, Marie Morgan
Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism
by Geoffrey R. Stone
Norton, 730 pp., $35.00
The People Themselves: Popular Constitutionalism and Judicial Review
by Larry D. Kramer
Oxford University Press,337 pp., $29.95
Of the innumerable expressions of patriotism in America, 'My country, right or wrong!' is surely the most succinct. Geoffrey R. Stone sets it at the head of his history of free speech in a time of war, not for the truth of it but as exemplifying a much-loved conception of patriotism. Its author was Stephen Decatur, the naval hero who, in 1805, commanded the raiding party that burned the captured American frigate Philadelphia off Tripoli. Today the United States is waging war in the same part of the world, no longer an upstart country avenging insults to its youthful national pride. But to say now that Decatur's loyal toast scarcely rises above the level of a slogan does nothing to undermine its emotive, unifying power.
Review, 5227 words
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