Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    In Defense of Our America: The Fight for Civil Liberties in the Age of Terror
    Unavailable
    In Defense of Our America: The Fight for Civil Liberties in the Age of Terror
    Unavailable
    In Defense of Our America: The Fight for Civil Liberties in the Age of Terror
    Ebook312 pages3 hours

    In Defense of Our America: The Fight for Civil Liberties in the Age of Terror

    By Anthony D. Romero and Dina Temple-Raston

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    Listen to the audiobook instead

    About this ebook

    “A brave, powerful book from one of freedom’s most courageous defenders. These stories remind us how real -- how personal -- the threats to our Constitutional rights really are -- and of the duty that we all have to protect them in times of trouble. Woven through these riveting chapters is a strong reminder: democracy is the best security.”  — Eli Pariser, Founder and Executive Director, MOVEON.ORG

    Executive Director of the ACLU Anthony D. Romero and award-winning journalist Dina Temple-Raston present stories of real Americans at the front lines of the fight for civil liberties at a time when our most basic rights are being challenged. From the story of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh to the battle against the National Security Agency's warrantless spying program, and from a movement in Pennsylvania to force religion into the public school science curriculum to the case of Matthew Limon, a gay teenager sentenced to seventeen years in prison for having consensual oral sex with another teenage boy in Kansas, In Defense of Our America offers readers an eye-opening look at the dangerous erosion of rights in the post-9/11 age of terror and chronicles the courageous ongoing struggle of ordinary Americans to preserve our hard-won constitutional freedoms.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 13, 2009
    ISBN9780061856648

    Related to In Defense of Our America

    Related ebooks

    Politics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The White House Bronze:

      May 3, 2021

      The White House Bronze:
      9 min read

    • Article

      Why They Blow the Whistle

      Oct 2, 2019

      Why They Blow the Whistle
      6 min read

    • Article

      Supremacy and Sedition

      Dec 15, 2021

      Supremacy and Sedition
      6 min read

    • Article

      Gay History In The City Of Secrets

      May 20, 2022

      DURING J. EDGAR Hoover’s 48 years as FBI director, people often gossiped about whether his bedroom tastes were as straight as his agents’ marksmanship, citing everything from his fondness for socializing in male groups to his close relationship with

      5 min read

    • Article

      We Must Defend 1st Amendment, Because Trump Won't

      Nov 17, 2017

      If Donald Trump were capable of graceful elocution, this might be how he'd phrase his feelings about those he perceives to be America's internal enemies: "There are citizens of the United States, I blush to admit, born under other flags but welcomed

      3 min read

    • Article

      We Must Defend 1st Amendment, Because Trump Won't

      Nov 17, 2017

      If Donald Trump were capable of graceful elocution, this might be how he'd phrase his feelings about those he perceives to be America's internal enemies: "There are citizens of the United States, I blush to admit, born under other flags but welcomed

      3 min read

    • Article

      Security Breakdown

      Feb 5, 2021

      Security Breakdown
      7 min read

    • Article

      Conspiracy Theories Rising In US Politics: Why Now?

      Oct 29, 2019

      Why are conspiracy theories so prevalent? When the other side is deemed a villain, conspiracy theories are easier to accept.

      7 min read

    • Article

      QAnon And On: Why The Fight Against Extremist Conspiracies Is Far From Over

      Jun 20, 2021

      On 7 January this year, a day after the mob stormed the Capitol in Washington DC, a curious exchange occurred in the netherworld of global conspiracy. Alex Jones, the rasp-voiced mouthpiece of fake news for the past decade, was in conversation with t

      11 min read

    • Article

      Got A Story To Tell (or Sell)? Better Back It Up With A Tape.

      Aug 13, 2018

      Some years ago, I accidentally carried a tape recorder into an interview with a senior national-security official in a secure US government building. (Actually, “accidentally” probably isn’t the best way to describe what happened. “Cluelessly,” or “w

      4 min read

    • Article

      On The Hunt For Hate

      Mar 5, 2021

      On The Hunt For Hate
      11 min read

    • Article

      On The Hunt For Hate

      Mar 5, 2021

      On The Hunt For Hate
      11 min read

    • Article

      Understanding Waco

      Feb 16, 2023

      JEFF GUINN IS a good popular historian. That is not intended as faint praise: He takes interesting topics of real cultural importance—Jonestown, Bonnie and Clyde, Charles Manson—and writes credible and well-researched accounts of them. His new, very

      5 min read

    • Article

      Books In Brief

      Apr 21, 2020

      MARA HVISTENDAHL, RIVERHEAD BOOKS, 336 PP., $28, FEBRUARY 2020 IN SEPTEMBER 2011, years before U.S. President Donald Trump pushed the United States into a trade war with China, Iowa state police caught three men trespassing near a cornfield under con

      6 min read

    Reviews for In Defense of Our America

    3.5/5

    9 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      This book looks at the current state of civil liberties in America, by exploring case studies of several different types of cases.Matthew Limon is a gay teenager from Kansas who was sentenced to a seventeen-year prison term for having consensual sex with a boy three years younger. If his sex partner had been female, the sentence would have been much less. As a way to lessen the impact of a proposed total abortion ban in South Dakota, Cecilia Fire Thunder, the President of the Sioux Nation, advocated putting an abortion clinic on Sioux land. The school board of Dover, Pennsylvania attempted to force the local high school to include “intelligent design” into the biology curriculum. A middle-age science teacher named Bertha Spahr led the fight against the plan. Kot Hordynski is part of a non-violent anti-war group at the University of California, Santa Clara. The Pentagon put him on a terrorist watch list and called him a "credible threat."Before anyone thinks that the American Civil Liberties Union, of which Romero is the Executive Director, is an anti-conservative or anti-Catholic group, consider: the ACLU defended Rush Limbaugh’s right to privacy when prosecutors wanted his medical records to prosecute his drug bust; they argued that anti-abortion protestors have a right to march and be heard; the ACLU stood up for Oliver North’s constitutional rights during Iran-Contra; when a high school senior wanted to put a quote from the Bible in her yearbook, the ACLU argued that she had a right to free speech-even religious speech. Also, the ACLU helped strike the provision in the Virginia constitution that denied Jerry Falwell’s church the right to incorporate in Virginia.This is a gem of a book. It does a good job of showing how civil liberties were not in good shape, entangling average people, even before 9/11; since then, things have gotten noticeably worse. It is very much worth reading.