60 years of progress in expanding rights is being rolled back by Trump − a pattern that’s all too familiar in U.S. history

  For many Americans, Donald Trump’s head-spinning array of executive orders in the early days of his second term looks like an unprecedented effort to roll back democracy and the rights and liberties of American citizens.

  But it isn’t unprecedented.

  As we have written, American history is not a steady march toward greater equality, democracy, and individual rights. America’s commitment to these liberal values has competed with an alternative set of illiberal values that hold that full American citizenship should be limited by race, ethnicity, gender, and class.

Masks and mandates: How individual rights and government regulation are both necessary for a free society

  I’ve been thinking a lot about the tension between demanding “individual rights” – in the sense of deciding whether or not to wear a mask – and calling for more action on the part of our government to protect us from the coronavirus pandemic.

  I’m a political theorist, which means I study how communities are organized, how power is exercised, and how people relate to one another in and between communities. I’ve realized – through talking to friends and thinking about the protests against COVID-19-related restrictions that have taken place around the country – that many people do not understand that individual rights and state power are not really opposites.

The evil of drafting women (and men)

  In March, a federal agency named the Commission on Military, National, and Public Service issued an official report on whether America’s system of conscription should continue and, if so, whether women (along with men) should be subject to being drafted should circumstances warrant it.

  After months of study and deliberation, the commission answered yes to both questions.

'If I’d been white, I guarantee you they wouldn’t have taken my money'

  “The robber didn’t get anything, but the police got everything.”

  That’s what Isiah Kinloch told The Greenville News during its investigation into civil asset forfeiture in South Carolina.

  Kinloch fought off a home intruder, sustaining head injuries that put him in the hospital. He called 911, and when North Charleston police arrived at his apartment, they found an ounce of marijuana, charged him with possession with intent to distribute, and seized the $1,800 in cash they found in his apartment.

Libertarianism in one easy lesson

  It would be hard to imagine a larger deficiency in modern American society than the one we find in the ability of individual citizens to understand their proper relationship with government and each other. Beneath the endless cacophony of varying special-interest groups lies a fundamental misunderstanding of the role we each play in a free society and the role government plays in guaranteeing our place in a free society.

David L. Hudson Jr.: High Court reverses woman’s conviction for profanity uttered at store

  A Connecticut woman who uttered a slew of profanity at a store manager during a customer service dispute had her conviction reversed by the state high court. The Connecticut Supreme Court explained that context matters in determining whether an individuals’ verbal outburst qualifies as fighting words – defined as words that can cause the recipient to react immediately with violence.

  "Fighting words" remains one of those narrow, unprotected categories of speech that sometimes leads to breach-of-the-peace or disorderly conduct convictions. The U.S. Supreme Court first identified fighting words as an unprotected category in Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire (1942), defining them as “words that by their very utterance inflict injury or cause an immediate breach of the peace.” Later cases have all but interred the first part of the definition – “words that by their very utterance inflict injury” – but fighting words cases still abound based on the “immediate breach of the peace” definition.

Gene Policinski: Join in the fireworks: The ones you watch or the ones around freedom

  This year’s State of the First Amendment national survey (SOFA), conducted in partnership with USA TODAY, does more than just sample our attitudes about those five core freedoms – it also may show just how those freedoms can work.

  Overall, the survey’s specific findings tilt to the positive on the First Amendment, thankfully. But there also are a few signs that we and our fellow citizens can do a better job of supporting freedom, or even knowing its components.