Hey Webmasters! New Photo Album Service Launched - Check it out!
|
|
|
OML Archives-
Subject: Re: Relevant text - Fri, 23 Feb 1996 17:47:39 -0500
Date: Fri, 23 Feb 1996 17:47:39 -0500
From: Christopher G Caruso <ccaruso@sas.upenn.edu>
Message-Id: <199602231444.JAA04970@mail1.sas.upenn.edu>
Subject: Re: Relevant text
To: orgonomy@jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Sender: owner-orgonomy@jefferson.village.virginia.edu
Thanks for your thoughtful comments on this, Shawn.
If I may snip out a piece:
Shawn P. Wilbur wrote:
> The question raised is whether or not "freedom of speech" can be genuinely
> protected by anything other than the ongoing, active creation and
> protection of free spaces for speech and reply. Free speech is a matter of
> social organization, constantly. Any sort of "democracy" which neglected
> the need for actively maintaining these spaces of freedom would be
> something of a sham - is something of a sham. Look at the way that freedom
> of speech degenerates into the right to reply and then to an ethic of
> equal time, mostly where the time allotted is equal to no position worth
> articulating. You don't have to look very far - at the television, around
> the net, in nearly any institution or business - to wonder if there is not
> a conflict between the freedom of speech that is guaranteed and the
> ideology of "free speech," habitualized as it is, that governs most of our
> interactions. Could this be the sort of direction we might want to take
> Reich's question? Do we really want to say that fascist speech -
> specifically speech which inposed constraints on the freedom to speak of
> others - should have the same protection, receive the same welcome, as
> speech which respects the rights of other speakers? And, if we accept that
> such a constraining speech exists, do we want to deny ourselves and those
> with whom we share potential spaces of freedom, the right to cry out
> against it? (I don't want to try to justify anger, which others will
> either share or not - particularly since freedom seems to me to demand
> room for a variety of responses which could be respected. On the other
> hand, i would hate to feel constrained to be (outwardly) "always
> conventional and correct.")
This seems to me the salient point:
> Do we really want to say that fascist speech -
> specifically speech which inposed constraints on the freedom to speak of
> others - should have the same protection, receive the same welcome, as
> speech which respects the rights of other speakers?
I'm not sure how some speech constrains the freedom to speak of others.
If we are talking about a threat, then that is something I understand.
If I say that I'll kill you if you say the wrong thing, and give you
reason to believe I mean it, then, I would say that I am constraining
your freedom of speech. Beyond that, however, I'm not sure what you mean
by "fascist speech".
Is _The Bell Curve_ fascist speech? It uses bogus pseudo-science to
say that people of color are inherently inferior to whites. Racism has
real effects on people's lives, and _The Bell Curve_ serves to propogate that
ideology today. Does publishing _The Bell Curve_ respect the rights of other
people? It is obvious that the authors don't respect the rights of the
majority of the world's population. However, I would also say that they
have every right to be published. Published and refuted, of course.
That is the basis of a free society. It is when people start using their
theories (whether they be theories of how anti-Christian speech is
destroying the American family, or that the emotional plague is ruining
America) to "protect people from themselves" that we enter the realm of
constraining speech.
--
Chris Caruso Check out: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~ccaruso/
ccaruso@sas.upenn.edu http://www.igc.org/fair/
Philadelphia, PA USA http://www.mcs.com/~jdav/league.html
--- from list orgonomy@lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Many thanks for Geocities providing this free space
Get your own Free Home Page
bravenet.com