🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Apr10.160932.8430@meaddata.com> paulm@meaddata.com (Paul Marchant) writes:
>In article <1992Apr10.111523.21899@athena.mit.edu>, wdstarr@athena.mit.edu (William December Starr) writes:
>|> 
>|> In article <1992Apr9.231712.18074@ucunix.san.uc.edu>, 
>|> schectr@ucunix.san.uc.edu (ROBB SCHECTER) said:
>|> 
>|> > - On University of Cinncinati campus, we have started organizing a
>|> > counter-demonstration.  The general idea is for it to be
>|> > confrontational but not violent.
>|> 
>|> > - We hope to mass enough people to drown out any speeches, and
>|> > defeat any recruiting efforts the Klan will make.
>|> 
>|> "Hi there... we're a group of citizens who are concerned about the
>|> Klan's negative attitudes towards the civil liberties of others, so
>|> in order to protest against their attitudes we're going to try to
>|> deprive them of their rights to freedom of speech."
>|> 
>|> Bleah.
>|> 
>|> -- William December Starr <wdstarr@athena.mit.edu>
>
>Well, Bill, I think you have things confused here. If the group were
>interested in depriving them of their right to freedom of speech, then
>they might has said something like: we'll shoot anyone who wears a
>white sheet, phyically block the march, violently attack them, etc...
>
>What they are planning on doing, it counter-demonstrate, i.e. exercise
>their rights to freedom of speech as well. Perhaps you'll decide to
>join the two groups and witness the exercising of rights in person.
>
Shouting down tactics and "confrontational" goals are seemingly ever
popular strategies in today's society when you disagree with another
group's platform.  For Queer Nation's shameless lambasting of priests
during Catholic Mass to the shouting down tactics used by other groups
to disallow political candidates to speak their minds, it seems to me,
as noted by William Starr, that it reeks of hypocrisy.

Let me be on record as being disgusted with the ignorant beliefs of the 
KKK, and I'm not voicing an attack on QN or any other group as well.  
I just hate to see well meaning people attemping (as is the current
vogue) to destroy the 1st ammendment rights of whoever they happen
to disagree with.

After all, what happened to the philosophy of "I may disagree with your
positions and beliefs, but I will fight to the death to preserve your
right to express them"?  Today it's more like "You offend me, so I'm going
to prevent you from speaking, whether by legislation, litigation, or 
simple mob participation."



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Paul A. Prior    Ban anchors, not reef tanks   "With friends like this,   
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