[Peace-discuss] Free expression for people we despise

[Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss]

I'm an Aristotelian, David. All human beings by nature desire to know. 


On Jul 21, 2014, at 2:52 PM, David Gehrig <david-cu at nukulele.org> wrote:

> It's not about Francis's credentials but his embrace of literally Nazi propaganda. 
> 
> Literally Nazi. On this list. Not a hypothetical. 
> 
> The question is: does the list do itself more harm than good allowing that?
> 
> Carl will absolutely argue for absolutes that are absolutely absolute in their absoluteness, perfect in their Platonic purity.  But I think most readers I've talked to off list say, and rightly so: WTF is this pure Nazi BS doing here?
> 
> Is this the "Peace, Love, and Nazism" list?
> 
> @%<


>> On Jul 21, 2014, at 1:11 PM, "Carl G. Estabrook via Peace-discuss" <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
>> 
>> Karen--

I think the importance of this list and others like it (there aren't many) is precisely that one needn't present credentials ("Show me your papers!") to participate.
And so there are undoubtedly people "posing, spying ... or just off their rockers" on the list. (Recall, though that AWARE members are job creators: from the NSA to local police & FBI clerks, someone has got to monitor this stuff, on the look-out for terrrorists, and our tax money is paying them to do it...)

The notion of "protected space" - from protest zones to trigger alerts - is a tool of contemporary censorship, which the present administration has  ramped up beyond its predecessors. (The enabling context is American liberalism's abandonment of class politics for identity politics.)  

I certainly do want  "a ready-made audience" of fellow-citizens concerned about our government's criminal wars, because the Obama administration and corporate media are working assiduously to insure that "nobody will talk to [people like me] elsewhere" (e.g., in the media owned by six corporations, the universities devoted to avoiding "the sixties" again, with debt-traps for students & ideological tests for faculty, and sham election campaigns).

"Engaging these people [like me] fuels their need for social interaction -- arguments are social interaction" - and may lead to action against our murderous government.

Regards, Carl


"If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence." --Louis Brandeis

"If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." --Noam Chomsky
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