Richard, I think we’re more or less in agreement and there’s a good chance that we always were. There were things you could have worded better, and I could probably still argue with the “part of the solution or part of the problem” thing, but it’d come down to a semantic argument and wouldn’t be all that productive.

So, yeah.

SarahH, I agree with everything you said, and as Voltaire never said, “While I agree with everything you said, I would be willing to suffer only a stubbed toe, or at absolute most, a small fine, to defend your right to say it.”

In your comments, you clearly express how much you value the communication of other commenters, and I think that if you wrote with a conscious effort to write to equals, colleagues, fellow Internet People, rather than down to them, it would go a long way.

An addendum: I’ve found that telling others that there’s no need to get “defensive” is pretty much always interpreted as defensive in and of itself, and I can’t help reading it that way as well. It’s the kind of thing I think all the time when reading stuff online but never type, because I think it always sounds bad.

Thanks for your responses, and I hope some of this feedback was helpful.

In some of my recent posts I have suggested that we take a look at ourselves and our own behavior instead of continuously looking at others with approval or disapproval in our minds. Most of these posts have seriously backfired, causing much anger and indignation where I was hoping to encourage thoughtful introspection… and I am discouraged from trying again.

The same thing happened to me on Skepchick. Maybe it’s inherent to the medium. I’m not sure. Or perhaps we should both keep posting and just don’t read the comments if they are too discouraging. (That’s what Mr. WriterDD keeps telling me.)

Well, actually, part of my problem with your post is that were specifically trying to defend the indefensible. Uh, it’s billboards, man. They’re private property. It is normal for those in the publishing business to be able to decide what they do or don’t publish. They have no obligation, either legally or traditionally, to treat all media submitted to them for publication legally. This is normal and in virtually any other kind of media you’d likely agree the obviousness with which media firms should not publish anything that crosses their desk. It’s just not an issue that’s worth getting up in arms about. It’s a privately owned billboard. Shocker, the publishers of that billboard (and I use the term publisher very intentionally) has broad discretion about what they all to be published on their billboard – just like book publishers or . . . Hemant. I haven’t seen him forward a lot of apologia from Christians. The bastard! He’s censoring Christians! Or . . . it’s his blog and it’s about atheism and he gets to decide who gets published here and who doesn’t.

Furthermore, I think that you’re also ignoring the way that, overwhelmingly in the US, the trend is towards greater freedoms of expression. Just today I was listening to NWA’s Straight Out of Compton. One of the songs I listened to was “Fuck the Police.” Regardless of what you think about the song, can you *imagine* a black singer in the fifties or even the sixties being able to sing such a song? They’d literally be killed. For a large number of groups – overwhelmingly, even – the freedom of expression is manifestly increasing.

And the Internet has massively increased Americans’ freedom of speech! I mean, I’m old enough to remember what the world was like before the Internet – there were no groups of transsexual Harry Potter slash writing fans or fursuit yiffing groups. The Internet has obviously and clearly massively expanded our freedom of expression in oh-so-many ways. Hell, even the rash of atheist literature should demonstrate how freedom of speech is improving.

Which is not to say that, in other places, it isn’t under attack. I detest the idea of “free speech zones” at political rallies for the Bush administration – not only does it limit our freedom of speech but also our right to address our government for redress of grievances. It’s our clear and traditional right as Americans to wave signs in the President’s face. Sure. It is happening – but the trend is still, overwhelmingly, towards expansions of freedom of speech.

You also . . . I mean, a lot of us were pretty annoyed when you said that blogging wasn’t “doing anything”. Like many people in the US, I do feel that one of the best ways to defend freedom of speech is to use it. (Personally, I am one of those people who have no faith in straight newspapers – they are filled, largely, with anti-communication – or the power of demonstration, so your specific ideas about what to do also rang hollow in my ears because I think they are “doing nothing”.)

So, your little rants I found to be deeply, uh, like I said, badly thought out. You had, have, a position and you’re not going to let anything like discussion or facts get in your way. You’re going to fail to listen to the people who disagree with the arrogance and bad thinking of your approach. You’ll say this is an “us or them” distinction – and I’m thinking, “Even if it is such a case, and I agree there are such things, what Richard actually said was not very well considered, both ignoring the substantial body of facts that counterindicates the general reality of narrowing freedom of expression, as well as the specific causus belli being something that doesn’t demonstrate the point of a narrowing scope of freedom of expression, and specific suggestions that will not help the matter while attacking those of us who believe that a good way to defend freedom of speech is to use it – something he specifically attacks as ‘doing nothing’.”

Autumnal Harvest, llewelly and Chris Bradley,
Okay, if the stance of “You’re either part of the solution or you’re part of the problem” is exactly the same as “You’re either with us or against us,” and if that second statement has been abused so badly by the Idiot in Chief for the last eight years that it will never, ever be seen as a valid stance again in any situation, then I give up trying to assert that stance. You say it is silly, propagandistic, stupid and bullshit. I will listen to your arguments and consider each one, but I won’t argue back any more on this. I have to concede that something about it is stupid. Whether it is intrinsically stupid, stupidly expressed by me or just stupid to try to convince people of it in this case, I don’t know yet. I will have to think about it carefully for a long time, but for whichever stupidity it is, I apologize. While I have usually been able to see the various sides of issues, I admit I am having difficulty letting go of the belief that once in a while things really are either-or. Free speech, as SarahH points out, is the foundation of all our other freedoms and all our abilities to make positive changes in the world around us. So I am passionate about this issue and I get frustrated when I see what I think are too many people taking it for granted and being either passive or not as active as I wish they would be, because I think it is under continuous attack and we are gradually losing ground. Miko put it so succinctly in his or her Nov. 23, 10:03 comment that I need not continue:

Both are valid: if you see free speech and make no attempt to have it censored, you’re supporting free speech; if you see censorship and make no attempt to oppose it, you’re supporting censorship. Inaction is always support for the status quo.

Thank you, Miko for your eloquent support of the basic issue. You do a better job than me.

To everyone,
In some of my recent posts I have suggested that we take a look at ourselves and our own behavior instead of continuously looking at others with approval or disapproval in our minds. Most of these posts have seriously backfired, causing much anger and indignation where I was hoping to encourage thoughtful introspection. I don’t know if it is the way that I present it, so some people think I am being judgmental or accusatory, or if it simply cannot be done in a public forum such as this, but it clearly doesn’t work and I am discouraged from trying again. I’ll have to practice my own thoughtful introspection privately and not ask others to accompany me. Whether you understood me, didn’t understand me, misunderstood me, agreed with me or disagreed with me, I thank all of you for at the very least reading my stuff.

llewellly, I know the difference between those two stances may be subtle at first glance.

‘part of the problem’ and ‘against me’ are functionally identical.

It really is not possible to live in the world and not have any effect on it, to be truly neutral.

If you accept that it is not possible to be ‘truly neutral’, you must also accept that those who are not with you are against you.
The ‘difference’ is not ‘subtle’. It’s bullshit.

The original post was foolish. It was accusatory and not particularly well thought out. It was arrogant, too. Most of the people who were offended at it has a great deal of justification in being offended. They were told if they didn’t write to specific people in a specific way, or take specific action, they didn’t defend freedom of speech.

Oh, now he’s saying that the choices weren’t exhaustive. Yes, we know that. But they certainly were given to be in the original post, and the overall tone was one where, unless a person objected in a way that the writer approved they were the enemy of free speech. Which just about everyone who read it knew was silly.

So, next time you want to admit you did something dumb, don’t keep trying to shift the blame off to the people who noticed it was dumb, OK?

That said, it really is a line in the sand kind of issue, as all liberties are. Historically, once we lose a liberty, we almost never recover it. And if we don’t know what we’ll do to defend it, we won’t even realize when we lose it. It’s fine if you want to prioritize other issues and do other things with your time and money (after all, they are yours), but you should know where, for yourself, you draw that line. If that means sticking with the local fight, I’m sure we’ll all support you in that decision; if we had 300 million (or 6 billion) people fighting the local fights, there’d be no need for anything else.

But there’s a difference between actively seeking the issue and responding when you see it. Perhaps you don’t want to go out of your way to advance this particular issue, but when you come across it in your daily life, you most definitely have a responsibility to act. I may not go out of my way looking for fires, but if I happen to see one you can be certain that I’m going to do my utmost to put it out.

Why can’t censorship advocates equally well complain that by not participating, “by [my] stable inertia,” I’m supporting free speech? Such a claim would be equally (in)valid.

Both are valid: if you see free speech and make no attempt to have it censored, you’re supporting free speech; if you see censorship and make no attempt to oppose it, you’re supporting censorship. Inaction is always support for the status quo.