Richard H. Weisberg has written about France during the Holocaust and has also litigated successfully in American federal courts on behalf of Holocaust-era victims. He is a pioneer in the Law and Literature movement. He holds a chair in Constitutional Law at the Cardozo School of Law. For some time, these three pursuits have combined in him to provoke thinking about the risks of limitless flexibility, both in behavior and in mainstream thought.

Richard Weisberg has written a wonderfully contrarian essay attacking the prevalent notion that compromise is a good in itself and instead defending the virtue of sticking to one's principles come what may. Whether or not one is wholly convinced by the well-written and often eloquent argument, with concrete examples vividly presented, it provides an excellent mental workout and thus aids in the clarification of one's own position.

• Preface. ; I. Thinking About the Way We Think: How Flexibility Can Be Fatal ; II. The Politics of Compromise: "Red-Baiting" Takes a New Form ; III. The Use and Abuse of Flexible Distortion in the New Testament and Early Christian Thought ; IV. Wartime France and the Occupied British Islands: Two "Flexiphobes" Unyieldingly Fight the Genocidal Trend and are Joined by a Sitting Judge in Nazi Germany Itself ; V. Secular Story Tellers Present the Limits of Compromise: Shakespeare, Glaspell, and Faulkner ; VI. Flexible Distortions of American Law and Tradition, or How Saints Paul and John Influence Fundamental Social Policy ; Conclusion, with a hint on "Performing our Values" ; Index

Richard H. Weisberg has written about France during the Holocaust and has also litigated successfully in American federal courts on behalf of Holocaust-era victims. He is a pioneer in the Law and Literature movement. He holds a chair in Constitutional Law at the Cardozo School of Law. For some time, these three pursuits have combined in him to provoke thinking about the risks of limitless flexibility, both in behavior and in mainstream thought.

Richard Weisberg has written a wonderfully contrarian essay attacking the prevalent notion that compromise is a good in itself and instead defending the virtue of sticking to one's principles come what may. Whether or not one is wholly convinced by the well-written and often eloquent argument, with concrete examples vividly presented, it provides an excellent mental workout and thus aids in the clarification of one's own position.

• Preface. ; I. Thinking About the Way We Think: How Flexibility Can Be Fatal ; II. The Politics of Compromise: "Red-Baiting" Takes a New Form ; III. The Use and Abuse of Flexible Distortion in the New Testament and Early Christian Thought ; IV. Wartime France and the Occupied British Islands: Two "Flexiphobes" Unyieldingly Fight the Genocidal Trend and are Joined by a Sitting Judge in Nazi Germany Itself ; V. Secular Story Tellers Present the Limits of Compromise: Shakespeare, Glaspell, and Faulkner ; VI. Flexible Distortions of American Law and Tradition, or How Saints Paul and John Influence Fundamental Social Policy ; Conclusion, with a hint on "Performing our Values" ; Index