Metaphor and Community
Metaphor and Community
This chapter discusses the evocative metaphors that abound in First Amendment thought. Some are fashioned to remind citizens of cherished ideals; others are calculated to stoke their deepest fears of democratic excess. Expressive liberty means “free trade in ideas,” Oliver Wendell Holmes pronounced in the 1919 decision Abrams v. United States, creating the imagery of an integrated and efficient economy to promote a legal order in which ideas move easily from willing creators to interested recipients. When a party proposes a more restrictive reading of text, he might caution, as Holmes did in another case decided the same year, that expression should not be tolerated “in quarters where a little breath would be enough to kindle a flame.”
Keywords: evocative metaphors, cherished ideals, democratic excess, expressive liberty, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Abrams v. United States, Holmes
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