No Liberty for License: The Forgotten Logic of the First Amendment is a 1997 book by David Lowenthal, a political philosopher and professor associated with Boston College.  The forward was written by Harvey Mansfield, a rare beacon of reason from Harvard. In the Founders’ context, one is free to act in accordance with the moral and natural law.  Boiled down in simplistic terms, man is free to choose to be moral, but not free to be depraved or immoral. The title draws from a classical distinction between liberty (responsible freedom under moral and civic constraints) and license (unrestrained, licentious behavior that harms society). Lowenthal argues that the modern interpretation of the First Amendment has forgotten this distinction, turning free speech and religious protections into tools for moral and social degradation rather than safeguards for a healthy republic.  He blames this drift primarily on Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis, two important Supreme Court Justices. Their successors continued the drift towards a different definition of freedom. The American experiment assumes enough residual moral agreement (or at least tolerance bounded by law) to hold things together, while protecting dissent. But it does not protect violent rebellion. We wonder, though, whether we have now gone so far towards license that the Founders’ fear that it will destroy liberty in the end is not now unfolding before us.