From: tallpaul@pipeline.com (tallpaul)
Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 14:03:39 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Strange Sounds of Silence
Message-ID: <199602120501.AAA22558@pipe11.nyc.pipeline.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


On Feb 11, 1996 14:06:45, 'tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)' wrote (among
other things): 
 
 
> 
>I rarely understand the points "tallpaul" makes, but this one is
especially 
>confusing to me: 
> 
 
I'll close on this point. 
 
>At 7:59 PM 2/11/96, tallpaul wrote: 
> 
>>I do seem to observe strange sounds of silence from lib'bers on the 
>>cypherpunks list about the legislative body who passed the law, although 
>>they must know about the law since they blast the "libera;" to "socialist

>>statist" President who signed it. 
>> 
>>I seem to observe similar sounds of silence from people who get upset at 
>>ostensibly liberal Tipper Gore's godlike powers to implement, as a single

>>individual, some form of record labels while remaining silent about the 
>>conservative forces supporting Gingrich clustered around fundamentalist 
>>christianity who were calling for censorhip. 
> 
>As a card-carrying "lib'ber," it seems to me that I have written more than

>enough articles denouncing the CDA, making fun of it and Congress, etc.
And 
>so have numeous other "lib'bers" on this list, including (but not limited 
>to) Bill Stewart, Duncan Frissell, Jim Ray, Rich Graves, Sandy Sandfort, 
>Vince Cate, and others too numerous to mention. 
> 
>tallpaul must be reading a different list than I am reading if thinks
those 
>he dismisses as "lib'bers" (in his other posts, and this one) are somehow 
>in league with the Christian Right in supporting censorship. 
> 
 
I suspect that T.C. May and I are reading the same list just as I suspect
that Alan Pugh and I are living in the same country with the same shared
press corp. 
 
But I do not dismiss people as "lib'bers;" I merely call them that. I have
noticed that a large number of libertarians are fans of Rush Limbaugh and
chuckle a lot when Rush refers to women like Andrea Dworkin and her
supporters as lib'bers. I also find that the people opposed to Drowkin &
Co. are upset at her use of demagogic language, private dictionaries, and
the like. So am I, and 	 started long before Rush got his TV shows. I am,
however, equally (if not more upset) by what I perceive as similar
demagogic etc. behavior by many libertarians. 
 
In short, I do not seek "to dismiss" libertarians as "lib'bers." I am not a
magician and do not believe that complex issues go away through magical
chants (around which T.C. May has correctly written.) But I do call them
"lib'bers" much as Ruch Limbaugh uses the term in other areas. 
 
Do some people not like this? I imagine so. 
 
Do they have the right to complain? Absolutely, and I support their right
to so complain. 
 
Do they really have a right not to be styled "lib'bers?" No, I do not think
they have that right. 
 
Put another way, what is sauce for the goose cannot be slander for the
gander. 
 
I do not believe that all lib'bers are in league with the Christian right;
I am distrubed, however, by the large numbers of lib'bers who strangely
never mention the existence of the fundamentalists in the
ultra-conservative ultra-private-property camp. 
 
I am equally concerned with some leftists who consider every example of
authoritarian behavior as "fascism" as I am with 'ib'bers who lump everyone
who argues for social responsibility as a "socialst statist." One
difference I see is that I am willing to criticize both groups while many
(but not all) lib'bers are again strangely silent at least the "statist"
side of the equation. 
 
I am sorry that T.C. May frequently has problems understanding my posts. 
 
Both of us frequently use sarcasm and rhetorical hyperbole to make our
points. Witness his excellent _reductio ad absurdum_ post on warning labels
for every group around the orld who believes that his or her personal
folkways and mores are deserving of unique consideration. 
 
However, this in itself does not reduce the confusion. 
 
Let me then offer a possible compromise to reduce the confusion. 
 
If T.C. May makes a special effort to better identify sarcasm when people
such as myself use it and rhetorical hyperbole, I in turn will make a
special effort to be more sarcastic and more hyperbolic in posts containing
both. 
 
--tallpaul 
Internet sports fan: Go Big Red! Smash State!