[Default] I missed the Staff Meeting but the Minutes record that D
Murphy reported Elvis on 24 Sep 2008 02:28:17
GMT in misc.survivalism :
"Ed Huntress" wrote
"pyotr filipivich" wrote:
Its a wonder that the lefties haven't attempted to ban the Harry
Potter books, chock full as they are with mysticism and
supernaturalism. Not to mention the rampant Christian symbolism, the
definitive expectation of the difference between Good and Evil, and
that you ought to not merely find Evil distasteful, but something
worth combating, actively combating, not just passing resolutions
against.

You're a little slow on the draw there, pyotr. Christian conservatives
have sued or petitioned school boards all over the country to ban them
from schools.

Lest you forget Ed there have been plenty of politically correct left
wingers pushing to ban books like "Of Mice and Men", "Adventures of Tom
Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn", and "Uncle Tom's Cabin" for offensive
words, ideas, and pedaling a "softer view of slavery" among other
reasons.

I also find it hypocritical that Cliff is against burning books. Him
being a big proponent of freedom and all. It's merely another legal form
of freedom of speech AFAICT. Just so long as the book you're burning
legally belongs to you.

It's my book, I'll treat it as I wish. Some books get "most
favored" status, no dog eared corners, no writing in the margins,
never get loaned out. Others, get notes & commentary. Some just come
in, get read a few times, and then go out.
Others, are so bad, that as a service to humanity, I burn them.
I'd throw them away, but I fear that someone might pull them from the
trash, and read it.

Neither the far left or the far right has much tolerance for freedom of
speech.

It really comes down to a balance between "Freedom" and
"Equality". The more Free, the less Equal, and vice versa.

Years ago, I came across a 'different' political spectrum, which
explains things a bit better, defining "left/right" as the degree of
governmental control in this balance.. I.e. going "left" increases
government control of the individual, making more people "equal", till
at the extreme you have a hive mentality, where each individual unit
is genetically programmed to perform a task, and all are equal (for
certain definitions of "equal". The newspeak application is left as
an exercise for the reader.
Going "right" you have more individual autonomy, more "freedom",
until (again) at the extreme, is the person who is so "free" they can
no longer communicate with other persons. This is known as "insanity"
- but it is an example of extreme individual freedom.
Thus we can see that it is possible to develop a kind of political
taxonomy which recognizes that The People's Progressive Revolutionary
Vanguard and the Intentional Anarchist Coop for Peace and Freedom are
on the "same side" (wanting to run your life "for your own good" or
"for the sake of the Children") while the Reactionary Imperialists
Mandarins is really "the good guys" because they just want to have
nice uniforms for government functionaries, and really don't want to
be bothered with coming into the office, leaving you to 'muddle
through' with your own pathetic lives.

Rotate that 90 degrees and "up" become more individual autonomy
but less "equality"; "down" becomes less individual autonomy - but
more Equality.

But that dynamic between "equality" and "freedom" has been
fundamental to the political and social flux since oh, the end of the
Persian Empire.


tschus
pyotr

--
pyotr filipivich
The cliche is that history rarely repeats herself. Usually she just
lets fly with a frying pan and yells "Why weren't you listening
the first time!?"