RE: Re: Censorial leftists (Was: Interesting article)

[jay holovacs <holovacs@idt.net>]

This post has a strange deja vu to it. I can remember back in the '60s when revolutionary wannabes would talk of the glorious peoples paradise while living in their comfortable suburban homes. How the workers' education system was open to all, no one was unemployed...

Now it has come full circle. Singapore is capitalist, so loss of freedoms can be glossed over. Many of us on this list would already be subject to the law for postings critical of government. People are in jail for looking at Penthouse on the net. Here we worry about filtering in libraries, they have whole country filtering. We worry about hate speech codes, they prohibit anything 'promoting racial or religious disharmony' (don't publish the Bell Curve there..), what good is being able to afford a printing press when you need the government's permission to publish. A few years back, at least, there were pictures in the airport of approved haircuts, you could not enter the country if your style did not conform. No first amandment, no fourth, no fifth, and don't even think about getting a gun permit.

It is amazing that people who are so offended by *government action* would gloss over a government that intrudes itself into so many areas of private life.

We are appalled by those who would sell their freedoms for perceived safety. Is it less  foolish to sell *fundamental* freedoms for a few bucks more income? 

Jay

==========================
   >From:    	frissell@panix.com
   >To:        	"J. Lasser" <jon@lasser.org>
   >Cc:        	fight-censorship@vorlon.mit.edu; cypherpunks@toad.com
   >Subject:    	Re: Censorial leftists (Was: Interesting article)
   >Date:    	Fri, Dec 5, 1997  5:31 AM
   >
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   >At 03:02 PM 12/4/97 -0500, J. Lasser wrote:
   >
   >>And Singapore survives quite well being a totalitarian capitalist
   >>society. Sure, you can pick nits and claim that Singapore's not entirely
   >>capitalist, but it's more capitalist than this country and certainly
   >>less free, too.
   >>
   >>The fact of the matter seems to me to be that most people are perfectly
   >>satisfied to be passive consumers. While they like to be free, that
   >>means free to make purchasing decisions. They also like to be safe, and
   >>if they have to lose civil liberties to be safe, then they're all for
   >>it. Just so long as they can buy what they want. That seems to me to
   >>describe the essence of the Singapore problem, and I'd bet it holds true
   >>for the U.S. (and many other places) as well.
   >
   >Forty years ago Singapore was poor and at risk of being wiped out by Malays 
   >or Commies or both.  (Maylays killed 1 Meg of their own Chinese in the '60s.) 
   > I'm sure that a few decades of being rich and safe will engender in that 
   >population a liking for social freedom.  They are currently more economically 
   >free than we are.  We rate 5th and they are 2nd or 3rd on the two indices of 
   >economic freedom.  They have many personal freedoms as well.  They have 
   >speech restrictions but are quite outspoken in any case.  The gum and 
   >spitting and smoking restrictions are no different than the smoking bans and 
   >such we are coming to live under.  We have one-party rule too.
   >
   >DCF  
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