Richard Holton wrote:
On 4/16/05, Tony Sidaway minorityreport@bluebottle.com wrote:
Ray Saintonge said:
I prefer a Dostoevskian revolutionary who will hesitate to throw a bomb when he realizes that it would harm others beyond his intended victim.
All hail to Fyodor, but really what harm can be caused by a good bit of ridicule? Are we simply to modestly avert our gaze when the king is so keen to display his march brazenly down the street insisting that we pay due deference to his kingly robes? To fail to point out that he appears to be stark bollock naked would be a gross failure of citizenship.
What harm can be cause by personal attacks, which we have a policy against?
Having a policy on personal attacks is not what defines the harm. Rather, the policy exists because of the harm.
Certainly kings and emperors leave themselves open to ridicule, but there are very few kings and emperors in the world and far more of the rest of us. Ridicule is an integral part of military propaganda. It was used in World War 2, the Korean War and the Vietnam War to characterize orientals whether they believed in their countries' war policies or not. It is used in schoolyard bullying as a form a psychological abuse when a child is somehow different from the norm. For revolutionaries it tells me that they are more interested in personal power than in an ethical change to what ails a society.
Ec