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Finding Freedom For The Thoughts We Hate, John M. Greabe
Finding Freedom For The Thoughts We Hate, John M. Greabe
Law Faculty Scholarship
In his dissenting opinion in United States v. Schwimmer (1929), Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., famously defended tolerance as an indispensable constitutional value. He wrote: “[I]f there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought – not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.”
Yet accepting that the Constitution protects the thought that we hate can be difficult, even during the best of times. And these are far from the best of times. Nuclear brinksmanship …