From: egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges)
Subject: Re: Once more into the breach, dear friends (was: Re Ed babbles again
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1992 06:37:33 GMT

In article <1992Sep12.182028.14059@midway.uchicago.edu> thf2@midway.uchicago.edu writes:
>
>That does not mean (1) that I believe criticism "chills" speech, or that
>(2) I believe that the owner of the machine from which the bozo posted
>should be forced against her will to allow the bozo to post, should she decide
>to boot him/her off the net.

How do you ground the sysop's right to boot bozo off net?  Oh, forget
it.  Let's save the net bandwidth and an airing of more of your silly
views.  Lesseee, the sysop has Sacred Property Rights and bozo...NOT.
Sacred Property Rights to "her" computer (actually the property of a
large corporation), devil a doubt where the Green Ants Dream.  Sacred
Property Rights not mentioned in the Constitution, which 99% of the
world's population do not enjoy, which many Americans enjoy only on pain
of signing a mortgage, and which are for the most part vested in legal
fictions (aforesaid megacorps.)

This is why I take a Dim View of these fearless advocates of free speech
and why their arguments for free speech are similar to the practise of
law in the Soviet Union pre-1992.  For it is (with apologies to Dickens'
Sydney) a "far, far easier thing than I have ever done" to defend
nonexistent rights than it is to defend REAL rights.

Robert A. Viktora had the right, according to the sitting Supreme Bozos,
to perpetuate a tort.  By this logic, Adolf had the right to trample on
his sysop's property rights.  You cannot escape the consequences of your
silly views.

>
>
>But is it not hate speech?  What is the "redeeming social value"
>of the word "hymie"?  Or are you backing off from your claims about hate
>speech?  (I also note that within the last fifteen months, more Jews have
>been lynched than blacks have in New York City, about which Jackson made
>his comments.)

So, IF New York had had a hate speech law at the time Jackson made
his "Hymietown" remark, Jackson could have, and should have, paid
whatever penalty the law assigned.  Note that if the laws were enforced
upon big shots with the same severity they are imposed upon us little
shots, the big shots would all be in jail; and if powerful white men
were held to the same standard as black men, they'd throw away the key.
An unfortunate consequence of the Puritanical tradition in this country
is that if any leader, whether Jesse or King, tries to inject morality
into discourse, that leaders own (very real) failings are held to
completely cancel-out his program.  Given that Christ forgave the thief
on the cross, this is bad theology.  Jesse said "Hymietown" and this was
wrong.  George Bush is a war criminal and this is wronger.

But you yourself deny the Constitutionality of hate speech laws and
would forgive Jesse his "free speech."  The contradiction's in your
court.  Unless you give people "free speech" not to permit them to
engage in dialog, but to incriminate themselves at the earliest possible
moment, in the same way the gun bozos would arm the criminally insane in
order to lock them up at the earliest possible schoolyard massacre.

>
>It's a shame that your hate speech law would have him jailed.

That's a lie.  Hate speech laws don't ban private remarks, they at most
enhance the penalties for torts and crimes in which hate speech occurs.
The guy made a private remark to another man (me) that he wanted to
write "'cept on Saturday night" on my bumper sticker re "another man
against violence against women."  Hate speech laws don't proscribe or
penalise this conduct.

You're a law student?  God help us all.

>
>Really?  Then why did you flame me for knowing about Gallagher and Shean?
>And why do you continue to make an issue out of a long-dead radio show?

Because of your nauseating hypocrisy, Ted, in speaking of anti-Semitism
and then turning around and comparing an Arabic-named poster (Sheheryan)
and myself to characters in a racist vaudeville program.  Vaudeville and
its successors, television and radio, have much more power than my
friend's idiotic joke, or even Jesse's slip, to set up people's
attitudes.  Nightly airing of Amos 'n Andy was a far more serious matter
than one "Hymietown" remark, wrong as that remark was; making money by
mocking Irishmen repeatedly is closer to Amos 'n Andy than "Hymietown."
And (as I've said) perpetuating structural unemployment and pitting
Ayran Nation against Nation of Islam by deindustrializing the country is
an order of magnitude worse.

>
>What is it that causes "Amos'n'Andy" to not have "redeeming social
>value," while Henry Miller does?  Have you read Kate Millett on Miller
>yet?

Ted honey, your plaintive reiteration of your inability to distinguish
Amos 'n Andy and Henry Miller is most amusing.  Whaddayou do, go in the
video store and note the price of Amos 'n Andy and thence to Tower Books
to note the price of Miller (aha! law 'n economix in action!) and make
your determination thusly?  And are you so afraid of women, Ted, that
the idea that some woman, somewhere, has (gasp) criticized Miller makes
you terrified to rate him above Amos 'n Andy?  Note the poignancy here:
Tedster at once downgrades Millett, finding it earth shattering that a
woman should criticise a man (although men do it to each other all the
time), and places her on a pedestal, making her opinion central to how
Ted thinks about Millett.  

Ted, you make a mistake common to neoconservatives, typically young and
half-educated.  This is the attempt to argue against liberalism and
modernism using its own precepts...to turn its guns against it.  This is
nothing more than an attempt to argue by reduction to absurdity.
However, it is a flawed and fallacious form.  Proper "reductio" assumes
the opponent's beliefs for a short moment and quickly shows how they
lead to a contradiction (in logic) or perhaps a result morally
unacceptable to all parties (in ethics.)  Your attempts to convict Jesse
Jackson under (nonexistent!) hate speech laws, laws that you yourself
decry, or to convict Henry Miller as an antifeminist (when you yourself
may be a misogynist or at least not sympathetic with radical feminism)
show that you actually buy-in to the views you oppose, in part at a
subconscious level.  You believe that this shows contradictions in the
program, but it would only if the program had to be accepted like the
decisions of a Soviet party congress: in toto.  Whereas I hasten to say
that Jackson's "hymietown" WOULD be actionable, IF uttered in the course
of a crime in a venue with a law.  Whereas I demur from accepting Kate
Millett's opinion of Miller, or from concluding that criticism involves
total rejection.  

Argument from contradiction, Ted sweetie, works best when dealing with
fragile mathematical structures.  Structures of political and literary
discourse cohere accroding to different rules.



     "It is a world cluttered with useless objects because men and
     women, in order to be exploited and degraded, are taught to
     regard as useful.  The dreamer whose dreams are non-utilitarian
     has no place in this world.  Whatever does not lend itself to
     being bought and sold, whether in the realm of dreams, principles,
     dreams, or hopes, is debarred.  In this world, the poet is
     anathema, the thinker a fool, the artist an escapist, the man
     of vision a criminal."

               - Henry Miller's prophetic vision of America of the
                 1940s, in The Air Conditioned Nightmare: or, law
                 'n economix triumphant

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