http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/813594037

The cost of free speech : pornography, hate speech and their challenge to liberalism

The proliferation of pornography and hate speech in contemporary democratic cultures threatens the liberal ideal of a marketplace of ideas, unhampered by state regulation of speech. Pornographic and hate speech, because it threatens to silence the competing speech of women and minorities, calls into question the liberal orthodoxies of state neutrality about the content of speech, as well as the traditional primacy of the value of liberty over the value of equality. By drawing on a broad range of philosophical traditions - from classical and contemporary liberalism, to Continental philosophy, speech act theory, critical race theory, feminism, and philosophy of law. The Cost of Free Speech argues that how courts resolve freedom of expression cases involving pornography or hate speech reveals more about the power of state speech to potentially oppress women and minorities than it does about the power of pornography and hate speech themselves. Once the liberal state becomes aware of the power of its own speech, the values of neutrality and liberty recede and the value of equality emerges as the true goal of liberalism.

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