From: egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges)
Subject: Re: Hate Speech Okay, says the Supreme Court
Originator: news@nimaster
Organization: Princeton University
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1992 22:06:14 GMT

In article <1992Aug20.210338.8050@m.cs.uiuc.edu> kadie@herodotus.cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie) writes:
>
>In article <1992Aug20.171135.29223@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
>kadie@herodotus.cs.uiuc.edu (Carl M. Kadie) writes:
>
>>The difference is that your [speech restriction] pact was voluntary.
>>It depended on individual consciences, not on the authorities, to
>>decide was, and was not, proper.
>
>egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges) writes:
>
>>Living in a community, from a small town to a big nation, is ALSO
>>voluntary...at least to a degree.  The resident of St. Paul IN PART
>>volunteers to live in St. Paul.
>
>But not every resident of St. Paul volunteered to submit to
>government-enforced speech restrictions.

Part of living in a civilized community is submitting to laws that you
may not personally agree with.  If you are convinced that some law is so
onerous or unjust that you cannot submit to it, you have the option of
changing it by participating in the democratic process, or leaving the
community, or civil disobedience.  The point is that libertarian
thinking demands a bogus distinction between "voluntary" associations
like Outward Bound patrols and "involuntary" associations like
government, whereas in reality these associations are not different in
kind.  Instead, they form a continuum:


     Outward Bound...Kiwanis...St. Paul MN...United States


from more or less voluntary to more or less involuntary.  

>
>Your love-it-or-leave-it stance can be turned around. Free speech is
>guaranteed in the charter of U.S. (a large community). If you don't
>like it, leave.

This just means that you accept that even so large an arganization as
the US is indeed (partially) voluntary, that the original distinction
between voluntary and involuntary association, critical though it may be
to the libertarian critique of law, is bogus.  I'm obliged to you for
this confession of incoherence.

>
>As for the argument that a unit of U.S. government should be able to
>make any rule that a private organization can make, do you really
>believe this? Many private organizations ban blacks, gays, Jews,
>atheists, women, etc. Should a city thus be able to ban, say, blacks?
>After all if some city residents don't like it, they can move.

Uh, it happens to be illegal in many cases, and immoral in all cases,
for those "private" organizations to ban the groups you mention.  Cities
are prevented from "banning blacks" by the Fourteenth Amendment in a
clear sense.  Whether they are prevented from banning hateful speech by
the First Amendment is precisely at issue, and I hope that my story
shows how in at least one community (an Outward Bound patrol) the
specific right of an African American man not to feel harassed clearly
"trumped" (superseded) our rights to say any sort of nonsense about
Oakland that our whim led us to say.  The First Amendment is important,
but rights are for specific people; specific people (including Keith
Ware) should not be sacrificed on the altar of formal "rights."