Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!usc!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!tank!rwt1
From: rwt1@tank.uchicago.edu (Robert Tracinski)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Sci.philosophy.objectivism
Summary: Clarification of my position.
Keywords: Objectivism, SPO, opposition, reasonableness
Message-ID: <7445@tank.uchicago.edu>
Date: 3 Feb 90 07:57:00 GMT
Organization: University of Chicago
Lines: 22

I would like to clarify my position on opposition to Objectivism on SPO.
Reasonable opposition will be welcome on SPO, but one must remember that the
newsgroup is not being created for the primary purpose of giving people a 
forum in which they state why they don't like Objectivism.

Would you consider it appropriate for Luddites to post on a comp newsgroup?  Or
for someone to post on a newsgroup concerned with issues of interest to homo-
sexuals (whatever such groups might be) merely to say "you're all a bunch of 
perverts and sick-o's"?  Or for an atheist to antagonize everyone on a 
religion newgroup?

This is why I think the charter ought to say that reasoned opposition is 
welcome, but that it should set a context which makes it clear that casual
insults or opposition for its own sake are not welcome.  I don't think that
most of the readers of SPO will want to cut through all of the noise of such
irrelevant postings.

-- 
Robert Tracinski         |  "A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is
<rwt1@tank.uchicago.edu> |   a contradiction in terms: before it could
Student of Philosophy    |   identify itself as consciousness, it had to be
University of Chicago    |   conscious of something."-Ayn Rand,_Atlas_Shrugged_