Law: The High Cost of Free Speech

A.C.L.U. dilemma: defending "hateful and heinous " ideas

Frank Collin, 33, is a swaggering bullyboy who likes to dress up in a Nazi uniform, spout totalitarian dogma and howl racial slurs. Aryeh Neier, 41, the son of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, runs the American Civil Liberties Union, an organization that protects individual freedoms. For the past 14 months, Neier and the A.C.L.U. have defended the right of Collin and a small band of brownshirts to taunt the citizens of Skokie, Ill., thousands of whom are survivors of Nazi death camps.

Why? The answer...

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