Current Challenges to Free Expression: A New Age of Repression?

In this essay, Dean Stone describes three examples of recent challenges to the principle of free expression. Addressing such diverse challenges as Jerry Falwell's dispute with Hustler Magazine and the University of Michigan's prohibition of "hate speech," Stone suggests that there may be dawning a new age of repression. In the final analysis, though, Stone is unable to conclude such a new age is upon us. The challenges may represent a last-ditch effort to forestall the virtually complete abolition of governmentally-enforced standards of decency and civility in public discourse.