Characteristically thoughtful and eloquent words from the N.Y. Times columnist. It begins: “It’s hard to grasp the magnitude of the emerging threat to free speech in the United States.”

It ends by quoting some of Justice Robert Jackson’s best lines from his opinion for the Court in West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, the case invalidating compulsory flag statute laws.

The heart of French’s newsletter is devoted to Frederick Douglass’s 1860 “Plea for Free Speech in Boston,” which French says “is the single most compelling argument for free speech that I’ve ever read.”