Anthony Lewis      ... award winning reporter and author. Twice the Pulitzer Prize has been awarded to Mr. Lewis over his long and distinguished journalistic career. Author of Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment, his Gideon’s Trumpet has been in print for over 40 years. Mr. Lewis was columnist for The New York Times op-ed page from 1969 through 2001 and for many years the paper’s London correspondent. He has also been a lecturer at Harvard’s Law School, a visiting professor at the Universities of California, Illinois, Oregon, and Arizona, and since 1983, the James Madison Visiting Professor at Columbia University. He and his wife, Chief Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, live in Cambridge.

Preview of Anthony Lewis 1:10

Ignorance is the enemy of freedom and self-government, a powerful tool for people in power, says Anthony Lewis, a legendary journalist. As the nation’s sovereigns, ordinary people have to know what's going on and have the courage to act on what we know.

“We've been through a lot of repressions in this country. It’s a wonderful system but it hasn't always functioned perfectly,” Mr. Lewis says. “Those fourteen words -- ‘Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press’ -- were not enforced by the Supreme Court in favor of any would-be speaker or publisher until 1931, 141 years (after the First Amendment was added to the Constitution.)

“And then in the next 60 years -- thanks to creative, bold, sensible judges who understood what this country was about -- the First Amendment was in essence applied to a whole vast series of aspects of our lives. So we do have protection of the courts when we exercise our right to say something different, unusual, in conflict with majority opinion.”

It took courage all down the line to make the First Amendment work, Mr. Lewis says. He draws lively examples from all walks of life from Supreme Court Justices to people on the street, from the beginning of the Republic to the present day.

“Courage is crucial in the process that makes freedom of expression work, because it’s all very well to say that in theory you're entitled to speak,” Mr. Lewis says. “(Justices) Holmes and Brandeis began dissenting from repressive decisions in 1919 and dissented right through the '20's before the majority finally agreed with them in upholding free speech. It took courage in the South in the days of racial segregation and discrimination. People were killed when Dr. King and his colleagues stood up and protested and marched. It took a lot of courage on the part the publisher (of The New York Times) to say ‘Yes, let's publish (the Pentagon Papers).’"

Just having free speech is not enough, as has become all to clear in recent years.

“After the Iraq War had been on a year or two, the Washington Post and The New York Times published open apologies. Editorial comments that said, ‘We were asleep at the switch. We didn't do the job we were supposed to do. We didn't look into the claims made about Iraqi -- secret weapons of mass destruction and so on and so on -- and we let it all happen without challenging it.’”

The sovereign people are never passive in what happens in the courts, either, he insists, eager for us all to put our freedom of expression to work.

“It’s a two-way street. People have to be involved because the courts are ‘just’ in their nature. Judges are not going to stray too far from what the public believes. Judges with their eloquence can inform public opinion, as they aroused public opinion on the side of free speech. But the public can also provide the foundation for judges to build on, a belief in freedom.

“Most people might not be too comfortable with the idea that they have to learn from your opposing view but that's why we have a Constitution.”