George Mason University law professor David E. Bernstein takes on a similar menace in You Can't Say That!: The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Antidiscrimination Laws (Cato, 197 pp., $20). This excellent book demonstrates that, in case after case, "activists" for one cause or another have shown a willingness to trample on the rights of others. In the name of weeding out bigotry and male chauvinism, political conservatives are silenced by campus speech codes at public universities; in the name of tolerance, religious landlords are forced to accept tenants of whom they disapprove morally; in the name of defeating homophobia, the New Jersey supreme court tried to make itself the final arbiter of who should and should not be admitted to the Boy Scouts.

The book offers a wide array of these horror stories; against them all, Bernstein offers a reservoir of common sense and fair play. He points out that, on basic principles, even those who clamor most loudly for these state intrusions would be wiser to eschew them. He quotes the legendary individualist Albert Jay Nock: "Whatever power you give the State to do things for you carries with it the equivalent power to do things to you."

A friend of mine many years ago suggested a bumper sticker that would capture the self-contradictory nature of much of the antidiscrimination agenda: "CRUSH INTOLERANCE." Bernstein suggests a better way -- "asking Americans to display a measure of fortitude in the face of offense and discrimination." He recognizes that this "is asking for a lot . . . in these days of the Oprahization of public discourse." But, over the long run, it's our only hope for preserving freedom.