Living the Bill of Rights: How to Be an Authentic American - Hardcover

Hentoff, Nat

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060190108 ISBN 13: 9780060190101

Publisher: Harper, 1998

Synopsis

Nat Hentoff is one of America's foremost and most passsionate writers about civil liberties and civil rights. In Living the Bill of Rights, he has taken what is too often thought of as an abstract issue and enlivened it by focusing on representative individuals for whom the Constitution is a vital part of life.

As the late Supreme Court Justice William Brennan told Hentoff, Americans need to know how :American liberties were won--and what it takes to keep them alive...and about the actual people who are not afraid to fight to keep on being free Americans." Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy underlined this need when he wrote, "The Constitution needs allegiance and loyalty and renewal and understanding each generation, or else it's not going to last."

With characteristic eloquence, Hentoff covers the full range of American life in these inspiring and moving profiles and stories and portrays such fighters for the Bill of Rights as a high school senior in Tennessee who is born-again Christian; a black Texas lawyer fired by the local NAACP for representing a Klan wizard on constitutional grounds; Justice William Brennan himself; another Supreme Court Justice, William O. Douglas, the preeminent; and a professional basketball star who, for religious reasons, would not participate in a display of mass loyalty to the American flag.

Adding to the book's breadth are stories about such additional public and private heroes as Dr. Kenneth Clark, a resolute African-American school integrationist when more and more Americans, including some blacks, are abandoning that goal; a Jewish teacher at a black university who spoke out compellingly against black anti-Semitism; a young white mother who refused to allow anyone to stereotype her or her children by their color; a black high school student who did not stand for the Pledge of Allegiance because she believes there is not equal justice for all in this land; and finally, among other paladins of liberty, a Southern lawyer with clients on death row whom he will not abandon.

In Living the Bill of Rights, Hentoff illuminates the basic necessity--and fragility--of our rights and liberties.

About this title

About the Author

Nat Hentoff is the prolific and successful author of many articles and books, including novels for children and adults; biographies; writings on jazz, politics, and education; and his extensive, widely praised work on civil liberties and rights. His syndicated column, "Sweet Land of Liberty," appears in the Washington Post and in more than two hundred other newspapers, and he is a weekly contributor to the Village Voice. Hentoff is a frequent guest on local and national television and radio. He lives in New York City with his wife, Margot.

As the late Supreme Court Justice William Brennan told Hentoff, Americans need to know how :American liberties were won--and what it takes to keep them alive...and about the actual people who are not afraid to fight to keep on being free Americans." Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy underlined this need when he wrote, "The Constitution needs allegiance and loyalty and renewal and understanding each generation, or else it's not going to last."

With characteristic eloquence, Hentoff covers the full range of American life in these inspiring and moving profiles and stories and portrays such fighters for the Bill of Rights as a high school senior in Tennessee who is born-again Christian; a black Texas lawyer fired by the local NAACP for representing a Klan wizard on constitutional grounds; Justice William Brennan himself; another Supreme Court Justice, William O. Douglas, the preeminent; and a professional basketball star who, for religious reasons, would not participate in a display of mass loyalty to the American flag.

Adding to the book's breadth are stories about such additional public and private heroes as Dr. Kenneth Clark, a resolute African-American school integrationist when more and more Americans, including some blacks, are abandoning that goal; a Jewish teacher at a black university who spoke out compellingly against black anti-Semitism; a young white mother who refused to allow anyone to stereotype her or her children by their color; a black high school student who did not stand for the Pledge of Allegiance because she believes there is not equal justice for all in this land; and finally, among other paladins of liberty, a Southern lawyer with clients on death row whom he will not abandon.

In Living the Bill of Rights, Hentoff illuminates the basic necessity--and fragility--of our rights and liberties.

Reviews

According to Hentoff's (Speaking Freely, etc.) introduction, the late Supreme Court Justice William Brennan once told the author, "The Bill of Rights never gets off the page and into the lives of most Americans.... But you've got to tell them stories... about people out there now who are not afraid to fight to keep on being free Americans." And in 13 profiles Hentoff does just that, reminding us of the power?and duty?of dissent. He begins with the late Justice William O. Douglas, who, in battling the status quo, filed more dissenting opinions (531) and stayed longer on the bench (36 years) than any other justice. Theres the courageous black lawyer Anthony Griffin, who at the bequest of the ACLU, defended the Ku Klux Klan against the state of Texas?and as a result was fired by the NAACP as its Texas general counsel. Justice Brennan himself is profiled in three of the essays as an idealist who liked to quote from Yeats's Cathleen Ni Hoolihan and who believed that "even the vilest criminal remains a human being possessed of common human dignity." Two essays are dedicated to educator Kenneth Clarke, who played an essential part in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The book is filled out with recent cases that made the national media (such as that of Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, a professional basketball player who on religious grounds refused to stand for the national anthem) and plainer folk who have stood up and spoken out. Hentoff has compiled a lively and timely guide to the U.S. Constitution in action.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A strangely intolerant brief filed in support of individual freedom. Longtime Washington Post and Village Voice columnist Hentoff (Speaking Freely, 1997, etc.) illustrates the Bill of Rights through stories about individuals whose lives exemplify them. Not surprisingly for an author more concerned with protecting citizens from government rather than in collective action through government, these stories revolve around court cases, and Supreme Court justices Douglas and Brennan play prominent roles. Less familiar and more interesting is the extended discussion of Kenneth Clark, whose work was footnoted in Brown v. Board of Education and who subsequently devoted his life to converting the intent of that decision into reality. Eschewing separatist appeals to black power and affirmative action, Clark remained a committed integrationist supporting equality in education as the key to social justice. With this exception, however, the stories of those not sitting on the bench share a basic plot: Individuals acting in an unpopular but completely legal manner come into conflict with an authority, they are pressured by those who believe more strongly in conformity to social norms than individual freedom, but they refuse to compromise their constitutional rights. The result of this formulaic discussion is both to supply some wonderful examples of principled fortitude and to reveal Hentoff's odd intolerance of all potentially legitimate claims competing with the Bill of Rights. This means, for example, that an employee refusing to attend a seminar on sexual harassment is a hero, and campaign finance reform is unacceptable given the Court's classification of campaign contributions as a form of free speech; apparently to be ``an Authentic American'' you have to believe that individual freedom trumps all other values. Hentoff should be praised for promoting the Bill of Rights, but should be reminded that there is more to the Constitution and to social life. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Despite its title, this book is not a manual of citizenship or even an analysis of the Bill of Rights; instead, it is a series of vignettes about ten people who took committed positions upholding the principles contained in our first ten amendments. Perhaps a more descriptive title might have been "Heroes of the American Civil Liberties Union," as the causes championed by these people are also those of the ACLU. Hentoff, longtime Village Voice columnist and author (Speaking Freely, LJ 9/1/97), is unabashedly sympathetic to the people whose stories he relates, and the reader learns a fair amount about the sacrifices they made in the name of defending civil liberties. But with the exception of Justice William Brennan and Dr. Kenneth Clark, we read little about the personal development of the people?how they came to be so dedicated to the Bill of Rights. Nor is extensive legal background offered. Readers with an interest in a general overview of the human side of civil liberties and civil rights litigation will find this book appealing.?Thomas J. Baldino, Wilkes Univ., Wilkes-Barre, PA
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0060190108
• ISBN 13: 9780060190101
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256