From: riggs@descartes.tec.army.mil (Bill Riggs)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,misc.legal,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Hate Speech Okay, says the Supreme Court
Date: 28 Jul 92 22:25:41 GMT
Followup-To: talk.politics.misc,talk.politcs.theory
Distribution: usa
Organization: LNK Corporation, Riverdale, MD

In article <1992Jul24.212058.9607@panix.com> gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes:
>
>     (Note: The first part of this article appeared 
>     with somewhat different wording a few months ago 
>     in soc.feminism.)
>
>Most discussions of censorship start out with the assumption
>that it is possible to practice it.  I think that, except
>in the sense of the overt, simple act of force in suppressing 
>speech, it is not.  Consequently, even if Dworkin, McKinnon,
>and other fans of censorship were right in some theoretical 
>sense, I think the implementation of censorship is a waste of 
>time in that it cannot possibly achieve its object, which 
>must be the abolition of certain kinds of thought.
>
>The reason for this is that censorship has to include in its
>structure the very thing it seeks to repress.  The simplest
>case of this is the famous command not to think of a one-
>eyed camel; the corresponding act of censorship would be the
>prohibition of speaking of a one-eyed camel.  Every act
>enforcing this prohibition would, _per_se_, carry out the 
>very action it sought to prevent.
>
>It is the same with other forms of censorship -- the 
>censorship of sexual or of violent material, for example.  
>The censorship sets up a structure in which the thing 
>prohibited is the central idea which lies behind every act 
>of enforcement.  The result is (in the case of censorship 
>of erotica) to sexualize everything on the boundary 
>between what is censored and what isn't, because _the_ 
>_boundary_points_to_the_center_.  That is why, in the 
>Victorian era, it was considered rather improper for a 
>woman's ankles to be displayed, at least if she were of 
>a certain class.  The ankle became sexually inspiring
>because it indicated the calf, which was hidden; the
>calf, the knee; and so on.  Sometimes, people felt the
>need to cover the legs of tables, and call them limbs!
>
>It is important to notice that repression of erotic material
>and displays did not seem to improve sexual mores during
>this period.  It was common for men to consort with
>prostitutes and bring home venereal disease (incurable, in
>those days) to their wives, and nothing could be said about
>it (because of the censorship).  We can see a similar
>sequence of events with HIV in our own day; although there
>was no legal suppression of discussion, those in control of
>the media and the structures of political authority
>preferred not to discuss it, practicing a kind of _de_facto_
>censorship on themselves and their sevitors, and the disease 
>spread unopposed except by the victim classes and their 
>sympathizers.
>
>In other words, while censorship is ineffective, _must_ be
>ineffective, in controlling thought, it does seem to worsen
>behavior, because those who wish to behave badly can
>practice mystification to hide their intentions, even from
>themselves.
>
>There is a further sense in which censorship not only fails
>to suppress its objects, but actually distributes them
>throughout the discourse, the body of utterances, in which 
>it operates.
>
>According to information theory, if we exclude redundancy
>and noise from a message, what remains is a set of symbols
>which enable us to make a choice or choices from some 
>universe of possible messages.  If the sender of the 
>message, the writer of a story for example, can choose 
>from a complete universe of possible utterances, we can
>assume that she chose to say what she said, and that what
>was said may mean no more than what is overt in the
>message.  However, if a set of meaningful sentences is
>excluded from the universe of choices -- for instance, if
>the writer may not write an erotic sentence -- then the
>forbidden material is an implicit possibility in all the
>messages which are sent (stories which are written, movies
>which are made, and so on).  
>
>The prohibited erotism becomes, so to speak, the shadow or 
>dark side of everything said within the reach of the 
>prohibition -- and the more that is said, the more 
>messages that are sent, the more probable it is that the 
>prohibited is implicit in the permitted.  The repressed 
>does not have to return; it simply hides behind the 
>unrepressed and becomes part of it. 
>
>The result of the systematic repression which censorship
>calls for is the pervasion of the conversational universe
>with the thing repressed, but in a darkened form.  In the
>case of erotism, we can say that the entire discourse of
>the repressing society becomes pornographized.  We do not
>have similar words for the effect which the suppression
>of language about violence, racial feelings, and other
>thoughts deemed unacceptable brings about.  The result is
>the same: the thoughts can no longer be examined in the
>light of reason or even in the light of free intuition. 
>The emotional force which attaches to them is in effect 
>entirely unleashed; thus, it is said that "the repressed 
>returns in monstrous form", because it is now deprived of 
>intelligence and community.
>-- 
>Gordon Fitch | gcf@panix.com | uunet!cmcl2!panix!gcf 
>*       1238 Blg. Grn. Sta., N.Y., N.Y. 10274      *


	This is my first, and I hope, only contribution
to what has been an acrimonious exchange which has its lion's
share of "hate speech."

	I've done several things that might draw fire,
as follows:

	1. I crossposted this big, long article over from
talk.politics.theory over to talk.politics.misc. I did so
because it was provocative and because I do agree with some
of the sentiments expressed therein.

	2. I deleted a certain person's name as a keyword
to make sure it didn't fall into somebody's kill file. So
some people will just have to go to the trouble to delete
it.

	Let's assume for a second that we're all on the
same team. We think racism, sexism, sexual misconduct,
racial misconduct are bad things and that we ought to,
as a society, have some kind of collective strategy
to reduce these evils to a minimum. What kind of tactics
should we use ? What kind of tactics should our 
government representatives and authorities be ALLOWED to
use ?

	As a conservative, I can certainly sign up for
a concept that proscribes extreme measures, which might
offer solutions worse than the ills they were intended
to cure. Our best defense against all these bad things
may be a "rubber band" of restraint, not the Maginot Line.
The advantage of a rubber band is not only that it is not
brittle, but that it moves in more than one direction.

	However, from a purely tactical perspective, it is 
IMHO appropriate to exercise a certain level of verbal 
repression against views which we consider to be "out of
tolerance". If, as Professor Bloom states, our highest
value is tolerance, we become prey to intolerant people,
who then end up seizing control of the debate, to the
degradation of our interests. BUT I DO NOT WISH TO MAKE
A VIRTUE OUT OF THIS NECESSITY.

	This is where both Mr. (banned name deleted) and
Alan Dershowitz go astray. Our "right" to be intolerant
is not something that should be particularly cherished.
Like the Minuteman missile, we need it to defend ourselves,
but we would rather do without it, if we could.


	Bill R.

	"My opinions do not represent those of my employer or any
government agency."
-- 
Bill R.
Xref: sparky talk.politics.theory:3070 misc.legal:14951 alt.postmodern:2204 alt.censorship:6357