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64 U. Cin. L. Rev. 1277 (1995-1996)
After the Death of Discourse

handle is hein.journals/ucinlr64 and id is 1293 raw text is: AFTER THE DEATH OF DISCOURSE Loyal Rue The m3st exhilarating and memorable flight of my life happened during my college years when a friend took me for a ride in his new Cessna. The take-off was smooth and graceful. Despite his youth my friend was an expert pilot. As we ascended above the treetops, I began to acquire new insights into a familiar landscape. The relations and proportions of old landmarks were clarified as my friend conducted a systematic tour of the city below. It was clear that my experience of the city was being forever transformed. Then my friend decided that we should see how things looked from a higher altitude, so we started another ascent. But as we did so, the aircraft stalled out and gravity took its ominous command. Suddenly, what had been an elegant flight became a confused tumble through space as my friend struggled to regain control. As it happened, our good fortune prevailed. A similar experience lies in store for readers of The Death of Dis- course, a soaring and insightful tour of the First Amendment landscape by Ronald Collins and David Skover.1 More than a constitutional treatise, The Death of Discourse offers a penetrating critique of the American mind and its lack of restraint in pursuit of liberty, prosper- ity, and pleasure. In the course of this pursuit, the argument goes, traditional First Amendment values have been debased by sophistry. Disingenuous liberal rhetoric has guaranteed First Amendment protec- tion for trivial, manipulative, and self-indulgent forms of expression, thereby engendering a popular cultural milieu in which the old sub- stantive, informative, and civic-minded standards of discourse can no longer be consistently applied. We are left with a contradiction be- tween traditional First Amendment principles and contemporary First Amendment practice. The question is: how shall we resolve the contradiction? There are, it appears, three options. One is to backtrack to the high road of reasoned discourse, which might entail a denial of First Amendment protection to trivial forms of entertainment, image-based advertising, and the rising tide of pornography. A second option is to leave matters stand as they are, but to countenance the contradiction with theories about the practicality of noble lies and social hypocrisy. 1. RONALD K.L. COLLINS & DAVID M. SKOVER, THE DEATH OF DISCOURSE (1996). 1277

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