Telling Stories for Liberty

Abstract:     
This essay reviews David Bernstein's "You Can't Say That!: The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties From Antidiscrimination Laws." It uses Professor Bernstein's book to explore how a principle of free speech can be reconciled with a harm principle when persons claim that expression harms them. It suggests that reconciling such claims leads to a more utilitarian approach to free speech problems than the book employs. The essay also suggests that the book's narrative (storytelling) strategy is ill-suited to advance libertarian ends, and that no plausible free speech principle can support a general claim for freedom from government regulation.

Keywords: Free speech, antidiscrimination

Working Paper Series