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From: orb@whuxl.UUCP (SEVENER)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: Protest in Russia and the U.S.
Message-ID: <1013@whuxl.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 4-Mar-86 10:10:48 EST
Article-I.D.: whuxl.1013
Posted: Tue Mar  4 10:10:48 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Mar-86 19:20:49 EST
References: <716@harvard.UUCP> <3630055@csd2.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Whippany
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> >If present trends continue then in many places there will be no
> >public town squares, only shopping malls.  What will become of
> >*our* political rights guaranteed under our own Constitution if
> >there is no place to distribute literature to the public?
> 
> If a significant percentage of people who avail themselves of malls wish
> to see the dissemination of such literature, mall owners will have no choice
> but to oblige them, or see business go elsewhere.  If very few people care,
> well, that's democracy in action.  It seems to me that you so often sing
> the praises of democracy, Tim, why not now?
> 
> Mike Sykora

The best form of democracy as I see it involves not simply rule by
the masses but protection of individual rights and civil liberties,
protection for the rights of alternative viewpoints, however repugnant,
to express themselves in public.  What is so reprehensible about the
Soviet Union and other Leninist dictatorships is that no such civil
liberties are allowed.  Dissenters have no place to dissent without
the approval of the authorities.  Let us turn your argument around,
Mike: "if a significant percentage of the Soviet people wish to
see literature in Red Square they will press upon the Soviet authorities
for that right."  But why should they *have* to beg askance from
the authorities?  To acknowledge such a demand in the first place is
to acknowledge that there is no room for dissemination of opinions
outside of that acceptable to the authorities.
By the same argument to say that the expression of opinions in our
own country depend upon their profitability for narrow interest groups
would mean that "freedom of speech"  is really no such thing at all -
it would become just as dependent on the whims of authorities
(even if different authorities) as public expression in Leninist
dictatorships.
I find it incredible that "Libertarians" whose utmost concern is
supposedly "freedom" could support such repression of free speech!
    tim sevener  whuxn!orb