The Tolerant Society

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Oxford University Press, 1988 - 295 páginas
In The Tolerant Society, Bollinger offers a masterful critique of the major theories of freedom of expression, and offers an alternative explanation. Traditional justifications for protecting extremist speech have turned largely on the inherent value of self-expression, maintaining that the benefits of the free interchange of ideas include the greater likelihood of serving truth and of promoting wise decisions in a democracy. Bollinger finds these theories persuasive but inadequate. Buttrressing his argument with references to the Skokie case and many other examples, as well as a careful analysis of the primary literature on free speech, he contends that the real value of toleration of extremist speech lies in the extraordinary self-control toward antisocial behavior that it elicits: society is stengthened by the exercise of tolerance, he maintains. The problem of finding an appropriate response -- especially when emotions make measured response difficult -- is common to all social interaction, Bollinger points out, and there are useful lesons to be learned from withholding punishment even for what is conceded to be bad behavior.

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Contenido

Introduction
3
1 Enslaved to Freedom?
12
2 The Classical Model and Its Limits
43
3 The Fortress Model and Its Limits
76
4 The Quest for the Tolerant Mind
104
5 The Internal Dialectic of Tolerance
145
6 Drawing Lines and the Virtues of Ambiguity
175
7 Searching for the Right Voice
213
8 An Agenda for the General Tolerance Theory
237
Notes
249
Index
291
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Lee C. Bollinger is at University of Michigan Law School.

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