In Kristoff's world there would be people who say stuff like, "If I could get my hands on a book on how to make nerve gas... I'd kill all you assholes."

Isn't that kind of a problem, too? He doesn't seem to have a solution for that one.

On 9/11/01 I watched George Schulz get it exactly right. Talking about the death and destruction, he said, we must not allow this to change who we are as a country. If we give up rights, we are losing who we are as a country.

A few months later Bush was at an elementary school. Before he arrived, the class had been doing an exercise: they had on the board "I love American because..." and a few of the kids had completed the sentence. After Bush gave his talk, he noticed the lesson. he walked over and added his own entry: "I love America because I LOVE FREEDOM."

Luckily we are pretty vigilant for threats to freedom right now. But I'll say this. Are you more afraid of A) a terrorist attack, or B) loss of freedoms and rights due to the fear of an attack?

With a country thousands of times more powerful in every way than any possible terrorist, I am scores more afraid of B.

Note Kristof's qualifier, "Our small presses could end up helping terrorists much more than Saddam ever has."

Like campaign finance reform and the overreaching laws proposed by Hollywood, this smacks of big media's fear of losing control.

The NYT and other big publishers will defend to the hilt their right to decide what information should be publicly disclosed (e.g., the Pentagon Papers) but have abandoned the idea of free speech as a general principle.

I don't think this issue is as cut and dried as you make it out to be. There's a major ongoing debate in the biomedical community about whether the details of the recent in vitro synthesis of the polio virus should be publicly released.

I'm sure you wouldn't want terrorists (or anyone else) to be privy to nuclear weapon design documents. Once they're in the public domain, there's little we can do, but we should do our best to prevent such information from ending up there.

"There's a major ongoing debate in the biomedical community about whether the details of the recent in vitro synthesis of the polio virus should be publicly released. "

(among other things - the polio vaccine was just a case in point)

All well and good, Stephen, but you really must go back to titling these essays "Tuesdays With Nicky." How I loved that name so...

It's not too late! Edit!

Until Nick Kristof enlightened me, I was under the impression the 9/11 attacks were the result of foreigners taking advantage of catastrophic lapses in the functioning of the FBI, INS, CIA, and airline security. Now I know better---the 9/11 attacks were actually caused by American citizens exercising their First Amendment rights.

I learn so much from the New York Times.

I remember hearing an interview, years ago, of a Soviet official, and the interviewer pressed him on issues of censorship and freedom of expression. I will never forget his reply, delivered with great earnestess and sincerity: "You lose sight of the fact that the people have the right to be protected from harmful ideas. We believe that this is an important right and we take seriously our duty to protect the people."

Technological advances spread and are disseminated. You can’t stop it, you can slow it down but you can’t stop it. Knowledge “gatekeepers” have always fought against it and failed. The best kept secret I know is the formula for Coke—maybe we should put them in charge of national security.

Typically plans for nuclear weapons are brought up as an example of info that shouldn't be made available to the masses. It is a bad example since given the exact plans for either the Fat Man or Little Boy (WWII) bombs, only a few governments would be able to build them. Nuclear weapons are of limited availability because of the difficulty of obtaining the material necessary, not the technology.

Does a how-to manual full of technical schematics deserve the same 1st amendment protection as a book that expresses political opinions? It's not really ideas or speech being suppressed, just highly specialized and technical information.

Ah, but Clay, where does one draw the line between facts and mere opinions?

And do we want to trust the politicians with that kind of (arbitrary) power?

Nicky demonstrates again how 9-11 exposed the nature of the aggressive instincts of the American Right and Left.

The American Right see all kinds of declared and undeclared foreign enemies and wants to war against them. The American Left sees all kinds of DOMESTIC enemies and wants to war against them.