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From: Matthew King <making@xxxxxxxx>
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Date: Sun, 24 Sep 2000 12:41:57 -0400 (EDT)
On Sun, 24 Sep 2000, Daniel Purdy wrote:
> No one has silenced Lynn Cheney as far as I can tell. What lies behind
> this eagerness to defend her? Is it just a libertarian sense of fair play
> that says everyone should have the right to speak?
It's a common phenomenon in cyberspace: the right to speak is conflated
with a right to be heard, which then morphs into a right to be taken
seriously. I don't know whether or not it's as widespread IRL, but it
seems like the great majority of electronic fora I've been in have seen
someone claim a violation of their right to free speech after others
announce that they're going to ignore them (and I guess that's one reason
it's so common online: IRL, you generally don't announce you're going to
ignore someone; you just ignore them).
Matthew
---Matthew A. King---Department of Philosophy---York University, Toronto---
"It was in the barbarous, gothic times when words had a meaning;
in those days, writers expressed thoughts."
----------------------------(Anatole France)-------------------------------
