<HTML>Carroll: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">I do believe that such an ad should be protected against police censorship, but the paper should be free to refuse it, and reasonable people should feel perfectly free to burn every copy of the paper they could get their hands on -- perhaps even smash the windows of any store that stocked that issue. </BLOCKQUOTE> The notion that freedom of expression exists only with regard to state censorship fundamentally undermines the very core of that idea, and of the capacity of a society to have free and open debate. By the logic expressed above, the Klan or the Nazis or the Militia or any other group of fascist vigilantes would be completely free to engage in censorship of anti-racist publications and publications speaking from and to communities of color, simply because they were not an arm of the state. Burn all copies of the Amsterdam News or Muhammed Speaks, and commit acts of violence against any outlet which sells them. And why stop there: why not go after the speaker/author him/herself? That is a recipe for a war of all against all, in which whomever's lynch mob is the stronger, or the more willing to go to extreme measures, silences the weaker, or the more conscience bound. With this brown shirt mentality, freedom of expression could not survive in any meaningful way. Freedom of expression does not include an obligation to publish offensive, hateful expression; it does not demand that we turn our platforms over to others who would use them for purposes completely contrary to the values of solidarity, freedom and democracy we, or at least those of us who do not hold to the position quoted above, hold dear. But it does require that we -- as well as the state -- refrain from acts of censorship, from acts of violence against those who express views with which we would disagree.     Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869) Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass -- </HTML>