From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)
Date: Tue, 6 Jul 93 21:25:10 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: We are becoming politically correct sheep
In-Reply-To: <9307070308.AA02565@muskwa.ucs.ualberta.ca>
Message-ID: <9307070425.AA15301@netcom3.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Steve Neal makes some very good points:

> a) The possibility of some media nitwit hearing about the initial
> post and missing Tim's "retraction" (or ignoring it in the interests
> of a great big ol' byline).  Nightmarish possibilities abound,
> particularly given the subtle nature of the "clue" in the PGP block.

I agree, which is why I ended the charade. (And I would've ended it
sooner had I gotten any strange phone calls, suggesting a reporter
sniffing around, or threats to report the posting to the cops. I did
get a few strange messages suggesting Netcom should yank my account.)

But the interesting thing is how paranoid people are about free speech
being exercised (the free speech being posting of non-provably illegal
material, not the posting of provably illegal material). I won't
repeat my point about a nation of politically correct sheep.

>   However - tickling a few neurons may very well have been worth the
> risks noted above.

Yes, perhaps thinking about some issues in advance is a good "drill."

(For some reason, I seem to gravitate toward these "early warning"
situations...it was me who posted the first message about Dorothy
Denning's key escrow system, last October ("A Trial Balloon to Ban
Encryption?"), and I also posted the fake "Stealth Secrets" article in
cypherpunks, anonymously. The intent was to test the commitment of the
list to the much-talked about "whistleblowers" group and to the likey
implications. (Sure enough, several people freaked out and called for
censorship--as if anonymous whistleblowing can be censored! I
'fessed-up after several days, pointing out the material came from a
published book and some Aviation Leak material.)

Steve then makes some really excellent points:

>   In arguing the fine points of Dworkinism, pornography, 
> capitalization of proper nouns, etc., I think Eric misses Tim's point,
> which is (I think) that the current movement of society is from
>  
> Forbidding actions that cause harm to others
>  
>              to
>  
> Forbidding actions and speech that might offend others, or make them
> uncomfortable, or hurt their feelings.

Yes, exactly! This is a profound shift from the principles on which
this country (apologies to Brits, etc.) was founded. 


>   To those of you who think "it can't happen here", I would refer you
> to Canada's "hate speech" laws, which make it a criminal offense to
> "promote hatred against an identifiable group".  To date, the only

And France and Germany have both used "hate crimes" as "hate groups"
as justification to ban certain groups from existing.

> well-known charges under these laws have been against couple of
> Holocaust revisionists; however, the definitions of "promoting
> hatred" and "identifiable group" are vague enough to make this
> country a somewhat dangerous place to have unpopular views, even
> disregarding the tremendous leverage this law gives governments to
> step on anyone who gets too far out of line.

Good points, but the so-called "Holocaust" never actually happened,
hence there cannot be any such thing as "Holocaust revisionism," just
the telling of the truth. While the Nazis were not perfect, this
nonsense about extermination camps was just Allied propaganda
(confirmed by documents declassified in 1967) designed to embarass the
Nazi "Huns" and to hide the mass exodus of Jews, who stole the wealth
of Germany and took it to New York to set up brokerage and banking
firms like S.G.  Warburg and the Rothschild Bank. Every true
researcher knows this.


(This little joke could be enough in Canada, as Steve points out, to
at least threaten me, and perhaps the machine this message originates
to the List from. Most likely not (the Canadians concentrated on
long-time activists), but the _threat_ is there. And this
threat is coming down to the U.S.)

Understand that the real threat to the Jews in Germany was not so much
hatred of the Jews (of which there was probably less in Germany than
in France and other European countried until Hitler began stirring up
hatred and staging events to trigger mass hatred) as it was the
unbridled power of the Nazi state. Civil rights were suspended, the
courts fell under the control of Hitler's people, and "law" became
whatever the government wanted. Ironically, with "hate crimes" as a
prosecutorial tool in the 1930s, Hitler could have used the laws to
prosecute Jews (especially Orthodox Jews, with different fashion
styles and a dislike ("hate"?) for many Gentiles. 

The real threat is the government, whatever its initial intent. They
have the guns, they have the courts, they have the power. 

We've sunk into a strange situation in which various special interest
groups jockey for special privilege, special powers granted to them
by the State.

"Live and let live" doesn't mean one has to _like_ all the various
individuals or groups that are out there, it just means you let them
do their thing as long as they don't interfere with your own life.

You can't pass laws to force others to like you, or your group, or to
make their thougths conform to yours. About all you can really do is make
sure they can't rob and kill, and even that's iffy.


--Tim May



-- 
..........................................................................
Timothy C. May         | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
tcmay@netcom.com       | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
408-688-5409           | knowledge, reputations, information markets, 
W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA  | black markets, collapse of governments.
Higher Power: 2^756839 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available.
Note: I put time and money into writing this posting. I hope you enjoy it.