Re: [Bug-gne]Ideologies vs. Practicality in GNE

[Tom Chance]

Personally Mike, I agree with you. I think the only
reason groups like the KKK and the US [ :-) ]
Government are as powerful as they are, is that we do
not teach people about them. Because we are afraid of
people sympathising with their views, we just tell
everyone the rosy side of everything, hoping they'll
never discover the darker side of the world (which
they do, and when they do they often love it and cause
more harm than good). By denying our darker side, all
we do is to give it more power. It is the same as
denying censorship exists in even the most liberal
states.

The rules below were made up just because I was trying
to set out some rules we could agree on on this list. 
I think every article in the world should go on so
long as its been voted in by the "yes only" system,
but legal problems say otherwise.

Oh on libel by the way, in 1993 in the UK the law was
changed when mentioning public institutions - you can
write anything about a public institution and you
can't be taken to court for libel. So we only have to
worry about private people in articles. And hopefully
the whole libel system will change soon anyway for the
better :)

Tom Chance


--- Mike Warren <address@hidden> wrote: > Tom
Chance <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > *It has to be informative; it must teach us
> something that from an
> > academic or practical standpoint can be useful.
> 
> What *doesn't* teach us something? Even our reaction
> to a
> racially-hateful poem can teach us something.
> 
> > *It cannot promote the harm of others in the
> present (but it can
> > offer alternative accounts of previous sensitive
> events).
> 
> I think I know what sense of ``promote'' you mean,
> but at what point
> does this become a rather meaningless and arbitrary
> distinction? When
> does this become, ``I don't like this article; it
> promotes harm.''?
> Does questioning accounts of Holocaust incidents
> ``promote''
> anti-Semitism? Does writing about the virtues of
> communism ``promote''
> driving over protesters with tanks? Do stories of
> sex with minors
> ``promote'' child molesting? Are histories of serial
> killers
> ``promoting'' murder?
> 
> There are people who would answer yes and no to each
> of the above
> questions; there are people who -- after seeing any
> of the above
> articles -- might write excellent rebuttals of them.
> Is it more
> valuable in the end to not have either?
> 
> I think the answer is no: having the ravings of
> white supremecists
> available for all to see -- and rebut -- makes their
> ``arguments''
> that much weaker. Might a child read KKK articles?
> Yes. Might they
> then also read the rebuttals to those articles? Yes.
> Are they better
> equipped to reject racism having read both, or
> neither?
> 
> -- 
> address@hidden
> <URL:http://www.mike-warren.com>
> GPG: 0x579911BD :: 87F2 4D98 BDB0 0E90 EE2A  0CF9
> 1087 0884 5799 11BD
> 
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