>>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 03/23/00 03:43PM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
>I sure like the record of the USSR better than that of the USA.
>Americans who think they are so free are so self-deluding.
Let's not re-fight the either/or's of the Cold War. Nothing would be more tedious.
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CB: Please correct me if I here misrepresent who said what when. I had said nothing about the USSR. You were the first one to say something about the USSR. I have you saying
"Wow, just like the USSR - special libraries under lock & key for the elite. Look how well it worked there!"
Which is sort of blatant redbaiting , refighting the Cold War. Something you now say is tedious. Then I reply to you, and now you don't want to refight the Cold War. If you find refighting the Cold War tedious , why are you redbaiting/ anti-Sovieting ? I had said absolutely nothing about the Cold War or Soviet Union, had I ?
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>I own a copy of Mein Kampf. I quoted from it in Wall Street. I would
>be very pissed off if someone tried to deny me the right to read it.
>
>___________
>
>CB: Sorry. Your not being pissed off about owning a copy of _Mein
>Kampf_ is not as important as me not having to worry about the
>existence of fascistic racists. That's how the balancing of the
>scales comes out to me.
I read the damn book and it didn't make me a "fascistic racist." You think people are that stupid and gullible that they have to be kept from noxious stimuli?
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CB: Yes, a whole lot of people are very influencable by racism. "Stupid"and "gullible" are your words. My observation is the vast majority of people who become racists and fascist racists do not think it up on their own. They learn it from someone who teaches it to them, often using books and other written material. The fact that some, even most people read that book and don't become fascistic racists is not a reason to keep the book readily available. And balancing it off, I would rather have you not get to read _Mein Kampf_ ( pauvre vous) if that's what it takes to keep those who would be influenced by it to become fascistic racists. However, I said you could read it in the controlled library. ________
>But actually, you could read it. It would just be through a complex
>registration and regulated process.
Gee, thanks.
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CB: Ohhhh is Dougie poo's poor little freedom to read Hitler inconvenienced because he has to register to read it.
____________
>Why don't you tell me what you think is the rationale underlying
>freedom of speech ?
I don't trust states or any other agglomerations of power (e.g. capital) to be the arbiters of what I should be allowed to read, think, or say. Call me a bourgeois liberal if you like, though your average bourgeois liberal wouldn't include capital among the potential censors.
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CB: So, do you think that what you actually in your life have read, thought and said has not been socially and politically constructed in the main ( arbitrated) by an agglomeration of power, a capitalist agglomeration of power, although largely behind your back ? And even significantly influenced what you were "allowed" to read? Don't you think there are significant illusions about how free you have really been to choose all that ? Doesn't bourgeois hegemony rely heavily on a hoax that individuals in bourgeois society are free to choose all they read, think and say ? Do you think there is some essential individual that is you that has actually controlled the development of your thinking and personality ? What would Foucault and Lacan say about that ?
If you don't trust states or any other agglomerations of power to arbitrate, why do you trust the state to administer the First Amendment and freedom of speech ?
CB