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From: orb@whuts.UUCP (SEVENER)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Reply to Sevener on Property Rights
Message-ID: <552@whuts.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 19-Feb-86 10:59:22 EST
Article-I.D.: whuts.552
Posted: Wed Feb 19 10:59:22 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 22-Feb-86 09:04:33 EST
References: <1691@bbncca.ARPA> <536@whuts.UUCP> <1636@ihlpg.UUCP> <540@whuts.UUCP> <1641@ihlpg.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 67

> 	It's not your position on the public's right to dispense
> literature in malls that bothers me.  I agree with it.   It is simply your
> mentioning the failed attempt of one company to try and prevent distributing
> literature in their mall in the same breath as the Soviet Union's all too
> successful attempt to do the same in the entire country.  That trivializes
> the desparate situation of dissidents and others in the Soviet Union, and
> makes it look like the U. S. and U. S. S. R. have similar human rights
> situations, except for degree.   That's a big lie.
> -- 
> Bill Tanenbaum - AT&T Bell Labs - Naperville IL  ihnp4!ihlpg!tan

First off, let me say that I think we are in basic agreement on what
people's rights *should* be with regard to distributing literature
on private property.  Namely that people have this right not for all
private property but only when private property such as malls is
a public thoroughfare which serves as a community center and hosts
community events in the same manner as town squares.
I am glad that you agree with me on this.
 
On your objection to my raising the mall issue, I think you fail to see
my underlying point.  At NO TIME have I ever said that the US is
*equivalent* to the Soviet Union in terms of civil rights.  Even the
Palmer Raids, which were crass and overt violations of civil rights,
were a cakewalk compared to Stalin's massacres.  Moreover while most
Americans have forgotten how many workers were killed trying to establish
basic union rights, the right to grievance procedures and so forth,
such killings also come nowhere close to Stalin's killings. I am not
about to justify Stalin's policies.  At the same time, one must recognize
that Stalin has been dead for 30 years now.  The instruments of repression
in the Soviet Union no longer include the wholesale slaughter of Stalinism.
Instead they include summary arrest, the use of mental hospitals and
generalized censorship.  They also include restrictions on people's
rights to distribute literature in public places.
 
The American media is quite prolific and repetitive in pointing out
this restriction in the Soviet Union.  One can never see a documentary
on the Soviet Union which does not mention restrictions on people's
civil rights.  The presumption of course is that the United States
has NO such problems.  This presumption is *wrong*.
That is my point.
Yet the mainstream American media never point this out. If you live
in a suburb in which the mall is the community center in general
you do NOT have the right to distribute literature.  The New Jersey
Nuclear Freeze has found this problem in every mall we have ever
approached in this state.  It has only been pressure and actual
lawsuits which have forced some malls to change this policy.
Even then, as with Willowbrook Mall, they impose such restrictions
on literature distribution as to make it almost impossible to
actually practice one's right to distribute literature.
Certainly we should criticize other nation's restrictions of
civil rights.  But should the American media simply ignore
similar restrictions in our own country?  Isn't it even 
more important to uphold basic civil liberties in our own country
before criticizing others? If we do not respect civil liberties
in our own country then how can we pretend to be concerned about
such restrictions by other countries?
My point is that while criticizing other countries, we should not
pretend that we are a Utopian, "holier-than-thou" perfect nation.
Such an attitude promotes the oft-repeated chauvinist strategy of
painting the enemy as the devil and one's own country as God's
angel.  Thus justifying any atrocity which may be committed or
planned against the "devilish" opponent.
For instance:
  "I have just signed legislation which outlaws Russia forever.
   The bombing starts in five minutes."
FOR A FREER AMERICA!
       tim sevener  whuxn!orb