Re: Re: Freedom to Spew

>>>>> "pete" == Pete O'Such <[email protected]> writes:

  pete> The denial of service angle is more direct than are willing to
  pete> admit yet, as both elements of the comparison are means of
  pete> communication.  A DOS attack on monkeyfist.com would end it's
  pete> ability to serve it's prime public function, the dissemination
  pete> of information, in exactly the same way that absconding with
  pete> the entire printed run of a college newspaper would end it's
  pete> ability to disseminate information.

Uh, as the owner of said server, I'd be a lot more comfortable if we'd
stop talking, even hypothetically, about doing nasty things to it.

  pete> There are many leftists who would defend burning a flag, but
  pete> damn few who would defend the forced burning of all of them.

*Forced* burning? I don't think the facts are such that anyone
*forcibly* collected all the papers. There were no reports of crazed
activists snatching papers from the hands of eager readers.

I know it's considered bad form to ask about the *content* of speech,
but *what* Horowitz says matters, I think, in trying to figure out a
close case like this.

He says, among many other odious things, that descendants of African
slaves should be *grateful* to white slave owners for bringing their
ancestors to the US, thus allowing them to escape, presumably, the
hell that is contemporary Africa. (Why and under what conditions
contemporary Africa is so uninhabitably bad, in Horowitz's view, are
things he leaves unremarked.)

Now, as a white person who tries pretty regularly to fight racism, *I*
consider those to be fighting words; and I suspect there are many
African Americans who take them vastly more personally than I do
(obviously).

Imagine you're on a campus where this is happening and your best
friends come to you, some of whom are black, and say, "these words are
disgusting, provocative, and hurtful to innocent people. Let's get rid
of as many of these free papers as we can so as to prevent as many
people from seeing this crap as possible."

I'd be very hard pressed to say no. Hell, I'd be there with bells on.

But we cannot even begin to make a prevention of harm argument unless
we consider Horowitz's claims and intentions.

I've spent my entire adult life in contexts where the expression of
ideas was the whole; but it seems to me that one gets the benefit of
the doubt about the protection of one's ideas only when one is sincere
in one's claims and sincerely trying to convey one's *ideas*. I
submit, and this is a point Bijan made nicely, I think, that Horowitz
has no such sincerity nor intention.

In fact, he'll often be candid about this on mailing lists. His
intention isn't to convey ideas but, rather, to silence and punish and
hurt African Americans, particularly, whom he sees as wayward,
coddled, and generally useless. His attacks seem especially timed to
intimidate those whose ideas are likely to lead to concrete political
proposals, i.e., reparations.

Maybe this is too fine a line to be draw for the sake of public policy
or law, but moral arguments can often be finer in the small than in
the large.

It is perhaps the final nail in the coffin of my Enlightenment
liberalism, but the content and intent of Horowitz's speech seems to
matter a great deal. Trying to sort this out without *any* reference
to what he says and why he says it seems misguided.

Kendall