1) Congratulations to TIPS - the digest version just reached volume
#1000. And 1001. (Each day the digest appears it has a new vol.
number.)
2) On free speech and the like, if I may be allowed a simplistic contribution:
Rick Adams wrote a lot of things like:
>my argument that forbidding such speech even if it _was_ occurring
>caused far worse harm than permitting it and responding
>appropriately.
I've been impressed by Rick's general stance on free speech. But, it
appears to me that Rick is attempting to protect a person's "right"
to speak freely in every situation, in all forms of human
interaction. I didn't know persons ever had such a right and I wonder
where it comes from. In my naive interpretation, the formal right to
free speech is coming from the Bill of Rights and applies to
legislation made formally by Congress (and by interpretation other
governing bodies) to restrict such rights.
In the course of human affairs (sorry), people negotiate with other
people about rules that apply to their sequences of interaction.
These informal rules are typically not subject to the formal
enforcing coming from government agencies (unless they lead to
law-breaking, of course). A business might restrict what its
employees can say in the workplace, a teacher might restrict what his
students say in the classroom, a parent restricts what children say
in the home, friends keep one another sworn to secrets, etc. This
goes on all the time and is not subject to intervention by government
agencies.
Further, in a little irony, it appears as if Rick's posts are
motivated by one substantive factor: to quiet down the expressions of
opinions that disagree with his. I'm sure his interpretation of the
events disagrees, but I can live with that. Nothing wrong with this
motivation - we all get into arguments and often try to "win" those
arguments. Perhaps one can think of this as a type of censorship, but
there is nothing formal about it - nothing that would call into
action the agencies associated with law enforcement or lawmaking.
Personally, I find many of the comments coming from the college
evaluation site repulsive. I think we each have the right - as normal
people interacting with other people - to negotiate for the
maintenance or change of that web site. It is not an issue of free
speech as related to Constitutional protections. It is, like
discussions of Mike Sylvester's questionable postings, an issue of
human activity in the context of a social system.
--> Mike O.
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Michael S. Ofsowitz
University of Maryland - European Division
http://faculty.ed.umuc.edu/~mofsowit
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