From: mattb@ctron.com (Matt Brown)
Newsgroups: rec.music.gdead
Subject: Re: Tipper Update!
Date: 24 Jul 92 15:53:56 GMT
Reply-To: mattb@olympus.ctron.com (Matt Brown)
Organization: Cabletron Systems INc.

Well, I wasn't gonna, but there was one point worth making.  The rest of the
post was an interesting counter argument, though about .02% too libertarian
for my tastes.

But:

In article <KING_P.92Jul21120550@fog.cs.odu.edu> king_p@fog.cs.odu.edu (Paul King) writes:
>   Jordan> There are clearly some cases where we can see intuitively that
>   Jordan> it is abuse of "free speech" to use the media to spread
>   Jordan> "dangerous" ideas.
>
> >  Who is this "we" blessed with such crystal-clear intuitive vision?
> 
>  And how is an Idea, a thought, dangerous? It could be wrong. 2+2=17
>  is an idea and it's not dangerous, just wrong. Factually wrong ideas
>  can be ignored, disproven. Other ideas can be dangerous to power,
>  can disrupt control, but part of what america is defies control.
>  Defies it hard. An idea can spread truth, the only things an idea
>  can hurt are based on control or ignorance or both.
>
My comment here is: the idea or thought that all Deadheads are 
drug-crazed hippies who piss on your lawn and leave garbage in the street
is indeed dangerous, though perhaps not intellectually so.  It is a general-
ization that can be easily disproven, but so what?  Once shouted to the masses,
an exponential volume of refutation is required to counteract it.  This is 
why juries are often ordered to disregard statements made in court: their mere
utterance can prejudice the case, even if they are later disproven.

Dangerous to power?  Yes, but not only.  The Rodney King verdict (as an idea
that those cops were not acting illegally) turned out to be dangerous and 
costly to many non-powerful people.  An idea became the basis for the 
Holocaust!

Again, the issue is not the content of the idea itself, but how that idea and
its aftereffects are treated in US society.  This is the part of the excerpt
that I agree with -- democracy defies control, meaning (to me) that it provides
the forum for advancing good ideas and beating the shit out of bad ones, and
it should provide the urge or instinct to do so.  This urge may be fully 
exercised by few (comparatively), but it is the duty of the rest of us to
protect those who speak out.  Power, on the other hand, often tries to supress
this (look at what whistleblowers vs government contractors have gone through).

Look, Jordan isn't wrong to state that free speech can be abused (if abuse
means to spread ideas that will have harmful effects -- harmful is another
subjective word; let's not fight about who defines what is harmful yet.  Can
we agree that ideas can cause effects we consider to be harm?).  Not many of
us (I hope) would argue that Hitler's use of media wasn`t harmful, once
you have the historical perspective to see where the Fascist revitalization
of Germany was steered.  The problem is the use of "clear" and "intuitive"
here, which makes Jordan's opinion sound too much like the slick slime we
get from politicians and tv evangelists.  I hope this is just "conditioned
response writing" and it is not his real intent to grease us up for the big
broomhandle ("Now that I've gotten you good folks to bend over, I'm sure
you'll enjoy what comes next").

But I think we almost all agree that we don't want to see a Judge Wapner 
residing over the People's Free Speech Court either.

Matt
"Keep your own, and leave my own alone" -- R. Hunter   
Newsgroups: rec.music.gdead