Theos-Talk Archives (January 2005 Message tt00741)

Erica:
<< Second if you were so intelligent to recognize immediately the
website was a joke when you first saw it years ago, you should
consider giving some lessons in the FBI about cleverness, once some
years ago they were investigating the site. >>

Hi again,

It doesn't bother me that they investigated the site. They will
investigate anything that someone high up enough in the government
asks them to investigate.

BUT WHAT WAS THE RESULT?

You said yourself, in the article your quoted:

<< If the creator is not e-mailing the obscene materials to an
unwilling audience, violating a User's Agreement, committing the abuse
depicted on site, or actually selling products involving animal
cruelty, then the site is considered free speech and is protected by
the First Amendment. >>

In other words, the FBI, once they completed the investigation, was
smart enough to realize that Freedom of Speech was part of the
creator's background, if not artistic freedom.

Again, I don't approve of the subject matter, except to recognize the
amount of creativity that went into what is to me, an OBVIOUS HOAX,
but I think that people should be SMARTER, especially to realize that
they're working right into the guy's hands.

Hasbro was not intelligent enough to realize that someone turning the
Monopoly "Get Out of Jail Free" card into a "Get Out of Hell Free"
card was not satire. They had their lawyers send a cease-and-desist
letter to the card's inventor. Now, their "Cease and Desist" letter is
actually on the Get Out of Hell Free website.

Some people are not intelligent enough to realize that they are
helping promulgate the visibility of the site. Every petition that you
send out increases their number of visitors, and they might even get a
few "Oh, ain't that cute" comments from some of the people you send.

How did you hear about it? I bet you didn't get an e-mail from the web
site. Instead, you got it from someone who objected to the site. If
NOBODY had ever sent out petitions about this site, they would have
never risen to their level of popularity.

If we allow the government to outlaw this particular site, then the
day will come that other sites are outlawed that we might agree with.

We have a President who has an extremely right-wing fundamentalist
Christian agenda. How many faith-based organizations that weren't part
of the Christian Right got government funds for faith-based
initiatives, for example?

I could see, if we allow some sites to be outlawed, that eventually,
the Christian Right would start trying to outlaw sites that promoted
points of view that were not Christian, by their definition.

Remember, the early church, around 400 A.D., tried to destroy books
that disagreed with their points of view, and some of those destroyed
books fortunately resurfaced after being hidden in caves for centuries.

I'm sure that some of the Theosophical books of the present time would
have been destroyed if that group of people had been reviewing them.

My main reason for "defending" their right to express their points of
view, however distasteful it might be (I think of it as mainly
humorous, rather than distasteful) is that if some of us don't try to
apply common sense to this defense, we might otherwise see the day
happen that someone needs to defend OUR right to express our points of
view.

I'm sure I have some opinions that you'd disagree with, but I hope you
don't try to shut me up when I express my opinions.

Oh, but I get the impression you'd like me to shut up on this topic.
I'll understand if the FBI investigates me, because obviously, I must
be unamerican to disagree with you.

But then, this would be a pretty boring country if everybody agreed
with everybody else.

John
http://www.GodLovesEveryone.org/spiritual-dvds-every-month/
http://www.GodLovesEveryone.org/
http://www.MAZES.com/