"Capt. NealŪ" wrote in message
Please consider again my post titled, "Demonstrably Stupid". The above
misguided folks define the term. They take a public stand against freedom
of speech.
Neither you nor Lady Pile It have responded to my queries: 1) is it free
speech to attribute to others that which you've said yourself, especially
when such attribution may injure the party to whom it is attributed? 2) is
anything anyone chooses to say protected under the auspices of the First
Amendment? (ie--can one yell "FIRE!" in a crowded venue?), and 3) shouldn't
illegal or illegitimate actions have consequences (a fundamental
conservative value)?
The concept of the netcop is nothing new. But it is a popular urban myth
that netcops are necessarily wrong or bad. Usenet started out many years
ago as a means of communication between engineers and scientists--a forum
for esoteric exchange between peers, as it were. Slowly and insidiously it
become corrupted by those who would use it for less enlightening purposes,
such as the myriad newsgroups that clog Usenet today. The engineers and
scientists attempted to put a halt to the nonsense and noise, but to no
avail. Their original NGs are all but extinct now, or at least so perverted
as to be worthless. So now we have thousands of generic NGs covering almost
as many topics as there are ideas, perverse or otherwise. Some are
worthwhile, but some are little more than an exercise in the arcane
mindlessness of the illogical. And any of them can be corrupted by the same
idiocy that corrupted the early iterations. Endless posting of the same
inane message--as we saw earlier this week here--is an example of how a NG
might be rendered useless. Posting BS under other's names is another.
It's doubtful a netcop can do much to stop the idiots. They are persistent,
as we've seen demonstrated by you. Get them kicked off a news server and
they'll be back in a day or so with a vengeance and a new ISP. Like flies
you can swat them all day, but they'll still be buzzing around your head at
day's end. So the netcop concept is an exercise in futility. But it isn't
necessarily wrong. Free speech has responsibilities and obligations. If I
stand on a street corner in your hometown with a bullhorn and proclaim for
all to hear that Neal Warren molests children every night on his boat and
may be a murderer, you'll probably sue me. If I anchor my boat next to
yours and scream in the bullhorn all hours of the night between 11pm and
7am, you'll have me arrested. A true conservative understands that free
speech is not an isolated concept, rather a guaranteed right with all the
attendant responsibility and accountability that a functional, orderly
society demands.
You're a juvenile whiner, Neal. You're no conservative. You may be a
redneck and a bigot, but you're not a conservative. A real conservative
would never question his responsibilities to his fellow citizens. You
simply don't give a **** about responsibilities to anyone beyond yourself.
Max
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