From: egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Edward G. Nilges)
Subject: Re: The Loss of Innocence
Originator: news@nimaster
Keywords: Neither Finnish nor Urdu
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Sun, 27 Sep 1992 18:20:33 GMT

In article <1992Sep25.230039.6995@island.COM> guido@island.COM (Guido Marx) writes:
>
>This is false.  Both Mr. Rosenblatt and myself DO have an interest
>in Finnish and Urdu speakers being able to speak in this country.
>If people speaking these languages can legally have ther free 
>speech rights infringed, then the stage has been set to deprive Mr.
>Rosenblatt and myself (and even Mr. Nilges) of our free speech rights.
>So even though I cannot understand what a Finnish speaker might be
>saying, I do have a personal interest in their right to speak.

This is the silliest goddamn line of argument I've seen in a long time.
It is an attempt to use the jejune philosophy graduate student's
strategy of counterexample, which refutes an absolutist or universalist
claim ("for ALL x, P(x)") with a single existence statement ("there
exists AT LEAST ONE x such that P(x)").  But my initial claim, that
"free speech" has much to do with listening and dialogue as it has to do
with speech (otherwise the homeless Finn or Urdu in Grand Central
Station is exercising a perfected "free speech") was no such fragile,
absolutist or universalist claim.

You might PREFER that speakers babble on in tongues so that you don't
have to deal with what they say...so you don't have to listen.  The fact
remains that we're not talking about some contrived situation, we're
talking about real speech and real power.  If you want to do pure
mathematics, fine.  But I see your pure mathematics and raise you to
pure logic; reflect with Catherine A. MacKinnon that the real victims of
proscriptions against speech are people who never speak for fear of
their homes and jobs.  Not some counterfactual Finn.

>It certainly is ONE of the freedoms that I am interested in.  I
>demand to have the right NOT TO listen to George Bush make one of
>his whiny speeches.

This is similar to a right claimed in the Sixties by backlash whites;
they claimed a right not to associate in public areas with black people.
You may think you're being hip, but you're not; why not listen to every
word Bush says, then hold him to it, or better use his words in the way
the Bush campaign is using Hilary's words; as weapons?  Bush gets away
with lies and actual incoherence because people DON'T listen to him.
Listening is not necessarily a complete buy-in to what someone is
saying; listening can be a powerful adversarial tool.

Seems to me that unless I trouble to read the newspapers very carefully
(which I do), I already have your right to be an apathetic couch potato.
Bush's speeches don't appear on TV, nor do Clinton's, and God forbid we
should show ANYTHING to the left of Clinton, unless it's a narcissist
like Candace Bergen/Murphy Brown.  So instead of a serious debate on the
real issue (say) of WHY even middle class fathers are excluded from the
family (entailing as it would a serious examination of the way in which
a corporate society treats both men and women as atomic individuals
without committments), you get Quayle sounding off followed by Murphy
sounding off.  Quayle's statement had a grain of truth; fathers ARE
treated as optional accessories, like in-dash CD players.  Murphy's
cause is truer; women deserve the right to reproductive choice.
Meanwhile, REAL fathers, from ghetto youth who can't even get the
minimum wage (which can't support a family) to middle class men who must
put in 90 hour weeks to stay employable, are ignored.