INDEX ON CENSORSHIP: The Magazine for Free...

INDEX ON CENSORSHIP: The Magazine for Free Speech May/June 1994 (c/o Virgin Mailing & Distribution, 10 Camptown Road, Irvington, N.J. 07111; $48 for one year , six issues; 256 pp., illustrated). Published in Great Britain, this newly revamped magazine is devoted to banned literature and challenges to freedom of expression throughout world. In recent years, free speech has come under increasing fire not only from fundamentalists and dictators, its traditional foes, but liberal groups seeking to limit expression they find unpalatable. Ronald Dworkin denounces the folly of maintaining “that those whose opinions are too threatening or base or contrary to the moral or religious consensus have forfeited any right to the concern on which the right rests” because “such a reservation would destroy the principle: it would leave room only for the pointless grant of protection for ideas or tastes or prejudices that those in power approve, or in any case do not fear.”