Censorial leftists (Was: Interesting article)

[Declan McCullagh <declan@pathfinder.com>]

This is nothing new. Honest (self-identified) leftists like my friend Bob
Chatelle complain about the censors on the left almost as much as censors
on the right. Other fave leftist censorship causes:

-- MacKinnonite antiporn laws (she's a self-identified Marxist, I recall)
-- "Hate speech" bans
-- Sexual harassment "hostile environment" regulations (Give me a break.
This is  the justification for at least one library censorware
installation.)
-- Various FCC regulations aside from indecent stuff
-- Advertising censorship (check out the Center for Media Education, a
leftist group if I ever heard of one. In fact, as I pointed out in my
Thanksgiving piece last week, CME's scaremongering Kids and the Net paper
was cited by Enough is Enough as justification for the CDA)
-- Labeling/compelled speech requirements (Jamie, are you out there?)

>bottom line is that most any political orientation is likely to thrash free
>speech when it appears to be a threat.

Well, at least the libertarians in the audience are consistently opposed to
government censorship.

-Declan


At 06:36 -0500 12/3/97, Jay Holovacs wrote:
>Interesting article in Columbia Journalism Review, pointing out that the
>political left is becoming more and more a cause censorship. I think the
>bottom line is that most any political orientation is likely to thrash free
>speech when it appears to be a threat.
>
>http://www.cjr.org/html/97-11-12-firstamend.html