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Pastimes : and there was no one left to speak for me -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: INFO_DART who wrote (22)	9/15/1998 12:40:00 PM
From: long-gone	Respond to of 276

The funny thing is, I really do not wish to be lumped with the paranoid militia types. Never could I be painted with the racist neo-nazi brush, nor that of the fundamental Christians, though I do also love freedom. I am not sure I could live in the "free" land they want, but it is becoming increasingly hard to live in this "free" land.There are those who have been audited by the IRS, and thrown in jail for disagreeing with this President. One must wonder as to the "freedom" of speech. Many of the things written by Eric simply turned my stomach. How can anyone, though, agree with any limits on the freedom of speech, or of the press? richard

To: INFO_DART who wrote (22)	9/15/1998 12:56:00 PM
From: Giraffe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 276

>>Our freedom of speech is supposed to allow us to express all the political correctness (and incorrectness)we want, but having people with an opinion different than ours proudly and self-righteously eliminated seems to be a dangerous road to start down if history is any indicator.<< I don't care much whether I am politically correct or incorrect. That's a judgement for others to make if they're so inclined. I just try to act in a way that is 'correct' or that 'fits' - with the way I understand the world and with what I want to create in my environment. Re. freedom of speech: I'm all for it. But people sometimes forget that a very important part of freedom of speech is having the freedom to choose the person you wish to speak with and the freedom to choose the things that you mutually want to discuss. For example having both a free press and freedom of speech means that the media are generally free to not print letters that they feel are inappropriate for their readers. You're free to send the letter, you're free to talk to anyone who is willing to listen, you're free to publish your own newspaper. But as a magazine publisher (which I was in my pre-giraffe incarnation) I was also free to chuck your letters and articles in the garbage if I felt like it. Some people might call that censorship but to me its just common sense discrimination. If I was running a pet magazine for example and someone sent me a letter that was full of obscene or rascist comments its a normal editorial function (always has been and always will be) to filter that stuff out. Same goes for SI. We don't have that kind of filter here cause mostly we don't need it. But in the case of Charters - he had the freedom to say what he thought, I had the freedom to express my distaste and alarm to the sysadmin, and the sysadmin had the freedom (and the power) to give him the boot. Just because you have the freedom of speech doesn't mean everyone else has lost their freedom to exclude you from their discussions when you misbehave. That's also a sacred right.