Oh, Toto. There's no place like home!

10-16

So, I’m pretty proud of myself. I thought I was going to have some sad, lonely moments during three weeks on the road. I did weaken a couple of times. At airports, I had an impulse to jump on planes that were headed to LaGuardia. But thanks to the support of my friends along the way, I was having too much fun to feel lonely.

I did feel a little cheated when I finally got home on Saturday. There was no one there. I mean no one–not my wife, who was on an emergency trip to fill a hole in her manuscript, and not my kids, who improbably were out of town. When I walked through the door, the only things waiting for me were a stack of bills and a pile of dog poop.

I would have preferred a welcoming parade with speeches by local dignitaries. But the uncharacteristic peacefulness of the house at least gave me a chance to reflect on my trip.

One of the things that impressed me was just how many free speech fights are going on at any one time in this country. The controversy over the play TopDog/UnderDog in Grand Rapids wasn’t the only one I encountered. I arrived in Minneapolis just a few days after the University of Saint Thomas, the largest private college in Minnesota, withdrew a speaking invitation to Bishop Desmond Tutu because it did not want to offend Jews who might be angry over his criticisms of Israel. (Fortunately, the university has reversed its decision.)

The proliferation of free speech fights was underlined again for me on Friday night at the Wisconsin Book Festival in Madison. I shared the stage with Matthew Rothschild, the editor of The Progressive. Matt’s new book, You Have No Rights: Stories of America in an Age of Repression, documents more than 80 deeply troubling incidents of censorship that have occurred since 9/11. Yet these are fewer than half of the cases that he has documented on the magazine’s Web feature, "McCarthyism Watch." He believes there are hundreds of other incidents that have not been reported.

There is no question that pressure for censorship is greater now than it has been in many years. The United States was attacked; our troops are engaged in bloody combat in a foreign land. Government surveillance and government secrecy are both on the rise. In the past, similar circumstances have given rise to terrible violations of free speech.

But I believe there is also a greater passion for free speech. One of the most important reasons we have so many free speech fights today is that people are less willing to accept restrictions on their speech than they have been at any time in American history.

On the national level, that passion is symbolized by the fact that membership in the ACLU has grown strongly since 9/11 and now stands at over 400,000. More than 200,000 Americans signed the Campaign for Reader Privacy petitions circulated by bookstores and libraries. Four hundred communities and several states have passed anti-Patriot Act resolutions.

This does not mean we can become complacent. Free speech has enemies. Every year, James Dobson’s Focus on the Family attempts to discredit Banned Books Week by pointing out that very few books are actually "banned" in the United States. And, it is true that the overwhelming majority of the more than 500 challenges to books in schools and libraries every year are resolved without removing the books.

But you can easily imagine what would happen if we did as Dr. Dobson suggests and folded our tents, allowing people to issue their challenges without opposition. Once again, school officials would bend to the will of "the majority."

I am confident this is not going to happen. Over the course of my trip, I met too many people who are deeply concerned about the fate of free speech. Many of them were booksellers and librarians who were mounting displays and organizing programs to warn against the danger of censorship. Most were just concerned citizens.

In 1944, Judge Learned Hand wrote, "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it."

The people I met during Banned Books Week 2007 still hold liberty in their hearts.

The fight for free speech will continue.