“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” and all that jazz sounds great, but do people really believe that? Read this, then come back and let me know what you think.
It makes a good point, though I believe that the phrase, “e-mailed to all district employees,” has more to do with the agency involvement than anything else. I think the post is also oversimplifying the issue more than they imply… but the general point is valid and quite interesting.
Categories: In the News
4:07 pm | 2 comments
June 13th, 2004 at 2:15 am
I’m not sure what RPC calls over HTTP using XML has to do with this guy, but he’s a jackass.
Jokes aside, there are more layers to the legal onion than whether this guy has the right to say what he said. The most interesting will be whether a community college is part of the government, or whether it is an independent institution. Because an institution can sanction its employees for any unreasonable use of an institution asset. For instance, if I were to send out an email to all employees (the email list of the collection of all employees being a company asset) disparaging one of our clients, then they could sanction me. Of course, if the community college is considered part of the government, then wouldn’t it be hampered by the first amendment, prevented from sanctioning such speech?
These problems are hard. Can’t people get over the fact that I hate alll of them. Happy 5th reunion, Class of 1999!
June 13th, 2004 at 9:00 am
ooooh. This is a tough one. But there is an enormous difference between the modified article and unmodified. One group IS a dominant group in power (potentially) abusing its power. The other group has very little power. Sujal LOVES when I talk about power dynamics.
Honestly, after the first modified article was done, I began thinking about it. I imagined he guy at my school who would indeed send those articles around. Part of my thinking was — this is basically SPAM. (AND OH MY GOD — I’m suddenly noticing the ads on this page are for Ann Coulter books… Sujal — how do you feel about this?) Anyway, I was thinking that this is basically a form of proselytizing, and I’ll think for myself, thank you (at least the articles sounded like they may be a bit over the top even for this commie liberal). I’ll admit, it raised some hairs on my neck when I got to the second one, which could be for a variety of reasons. (I’ve been thinking a lot about white guilt lately, for one.) Basically, it’s icky, and yes, some might say the initial articles were icky — but again — the power dynamic seriously affects the impact of the articles. I guess, when the day is done, I believe in civil liberties. Of course there will be idiots out there I don’t agree with, but we can hardly hold real discussion if people cannot express their views.