i'm sorry to read your local vermin, cats and Kookaburras are ahead of you. perhaps you'd like an assault weapon which will launch a spray of rounds that can't miss anything within several yards? i'd still like to know if you ate those wallabies you shot years ago. ;-)
i agree with noam chomsky's premise that *all* denials of free speech undercut a democracy.
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v07/v07p123_HNAC.html
you can't limit just those who say what you don't like without having it backfire. for example, the republicans in the US went nuts when FD Roosevelt won the presidency term after term. they couldn't wait to pass an amendment that limited the number of terms anyone could be president to two terms. then along came ronald reagan. he could have been elected for four terms or more -- provided no one cared that he was increasingly senile for most of his second term. now their own amendment drove the republicans nuts.
also, the very precedents they instituted in their obsessive pursuit of bill clinton's impeachment hopefully will backfire against them in the matter of shrub bush and the valerie plame affair. if former ambassador wilson has any say, which i expect his legal team certainly will, it will backfire big time. what goes around comes around.
you can't limit free speech and you can't trust govt or anyone else to do it. what starts as an attempt to limit the evil, to use one of shrub's favorite words, speech we don't like blossoms into limits on speech for all of us. it's all too easy to put limits on everyone's free speech.
it's like australia's importation of rabbits -- i know you're in tasmania. this sounded like a good idea until the rabbits' natural instincts took over.
to reiterate, i'm much more concerned with the way govt limits free speech and the hate mongers who work to divide and conquer us in service to the power elite than i am the run of the mill lunatic fringe. we need to use our energies to devise strategies for dealing with obnoxious speech in a free speech environment. you can't limit obnoxious speech the way you limit vermin without putting your own rights in jeopardy.
best, R
by the way, how are the tasmanian devils doing? i understand they are at risk.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Bill Bartlett" <billbartlett at dodo.com.au> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Monday, July 19, 2004 5:41 PM Subject: Re: Fw: [lbo-talk] The curse of literacy
: At 10:28 PM -0700 18/7/04, R wrote:
:
: >political power and hate speech are interlocked. you can't separate
them;
: >so there's no confusing the issue.
:
: That's my point too.
:
:
: >: You are fetishing free speech
: >
: >that, my friend, is a matter of opinion. assuming you wish for a better
: >society, you will not get there without free speech. that's reality, not
a
: >fetish.
:
: I'm not opposed to free speech, I'm for it. But freedoms aren't
: unlimited, they all entail responsibilities.
:
: >: No, I don't have to tolerate them at all. The fact is that racism is
: >: intolerable, it is incompatible with a just and free society. Free
: >: speech is meaningless if it only applies to some sections of society
: >: and of course it can't possible apply equally in a society where
: >: racial discrimination is the rule. The discriminated against won't be
: >: entitled to it, because they are effectively non-citizens.
: >
: >i generally agree with the latter. yet, you've dodged the issue of who
: >decides what speech is free and what isn't.
: