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Pastimes : THE SLIGHTLY MODERATED BOXING RING -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (19720)	8/23/2002 2:25:03 PM
From: jlallen	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

Free speech does not include libel and the other tripe TP posts. It does do harm to have such sentiments expressed as if they were factual. It creates division where there should be none....In time of war, this is something we should all be concerned about. Our nation has been attacked..... JLA

To: Lane3 who wrote (19720)	8/23/2002 3:51:08 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Respond to of 21057

To keep one person off No. Actually there have always been at least two. Currently there are three, although I could change it to two with no harm since one of our bannees has (finally) been terminated after (finally) driving Jeff crazy. Jeff must have the patience of Job. There are other posters who seem to be similarly partisan and blind. There are others who do nothing but snipe. There are others who say squirrelly things. What is so special about this one that he has to be silenced? Does his polluting the thread add anything to it? It was proposed as a hygiene measure. I don't buy the "undermine the war effort" argument. He does his best. What I see happening is that TP has gotten under JLA's skin and JLA has asked for relief instead of coping like the rest of us. Not just JLA. If I regarded it as solely my decision, I would have kicked his butt out of here a long time ago. He's a waste of good bandwidth. But I gave up the dictator's powers some time back. I might consider trading my vote on this one in exchange for your banning the irritant of my choice. Would that be JLA? :-)

To: Lane3 who wrote (19720)	8/24/2002 8:36:44 PM
From: E	Respond to of 21057

I don't buy the "undermine the war effort" argument. No one is deluded enough to think that anything said on SI affects the war effort. The only explanation left is that TP's politics are too abhorrent to be voiced and I don't like the sound of that. No one is paranoid enough to believe TP's posts on SI are "undermining the war effort." What they do is anger Bush's supporters, is all. This is obviously about some individuals finding TP's exercise of his right to speak his mind so upsettingly provocative to them that they want to silence him -- even in a Boxing Ring, even on a "free for all" thread. It's not about disruptiveness, because he hasn't disrupted anything. It's not about non-responsiveness, because that's SOP on SI threads, and among many of the would-be censors. It's not about inaccuracy. It's about shutting up political speech that is abhorrent to them. I don't buy for a single second that even if TP were saying things of equal partisanship, or equally "non-responsive," or equally hostile to a President of the United States and thus to our international standing, but from a RW perspective, there would have been a move to silence him on this thread. It's bullshit. It was about politics. The banning effort was an exercise in partisan politics ridiculously masquerading as non-partisan. The lists of those considered by the would-be banners to be "liberals" whom no one has moved to ban is irrelevant. Their views and TP's aren't identical. It's his provocative free expression they want to silence. Well, my views too, have been silenced, in the case of JLA and any thread he's had a chance to do it on -- as is his right. I point it out, because the move was made by one to whom silencing those with whom he disagrees comes easily. But this thread was created in response to one thing: a sordid personal campaign of slander, threats, outright lies and sexual harassment of one of our community by a sicko. It wasn't created to silence abhorrent political speech. JLA has his own threads to do that on. The only posts I've exchanged with TP ended when I typed the words "I give up." I haven't read most of his posts. But I've read enough to know that it's the expression of his political views and opinions and not his argumentation techniques, however outrageous, that make those whom he angers want to silence him. IMO the impulse is human but is un-American. That's why, imo, the motion failed to pass. It's deep in the American soul to let political speech happen, however misguided the speaker is, in the opinion of the majority.