[Prev| Next| Index] February 17, 1996, Gess Shankar, Stone Mountain, GA,
USA

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Decency Act or an indecent act?

By Gess Shankar

I was casually flipping through a collection of quotations, when I came
across the following gem:

     "Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect
     liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born
     to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty
     by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in
     insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without
     understanding."
     - Justice Louis D. Brandeis, dissenting,
     Olmstead v. United States, 277 U.S. 479 (1928)

Justice Brandeis could well have been talking about the Telecommunications
Act of 1996! Men of zeal, pushing political hot buttons, well-meaning but
without any understanding what the Internet is all about! And insidious
encroachment it is. The Internet today, what next tomorrow? And has
experience taught us to be on our guard?

Communications technology, including the Internet, has been instrumental in
the recent resurgence of democracy in East Europe and the Orient. The World
Wide Web is causing a reversal in the downward trend of literacy. More
people are engaging in written communication than ever before. The
commercialization of the net is changing the way we work, communicate and
even play. The net is going to be the pervasive medium in the next
millennium. This law will have a chilling effect, if the publishers and
carriers have to impose restrictive rules and then police the net to ensure
compliance, or risk the wrath of an adventurous prosecutor.

We have a criminal justice system, which is brutal to victims and lenient
to murderers, rapists and drug lords. We have an entertainment system,
which glorifies violence and devalues human life. There are many other
social ills which plague the society. Legislation of morality has never
succeeded. The social maladies can be reversed only when individuals take
responsibility for their own actions and parents are allowed to and do
exercise their own responsibilities for raising their children.

Instead we have yet another instance of the Government taking care of
children and protecting them from the evil monsters stalking the net. Just
as they are taking care of the drug problem. Or the teen pregnancies. The
Republicans are touting smaller government and singing the praise of
passing control to the states and local governements so that they can be
closer to the people. Closest to the kids are the parents or sadly, parent.
It should be their job to teach the youngsters the value system. Striking a
blow to the freedom of expression is not going to solve that problem.

It may seem that this is a small price to pay. But like good health, you
realize its importance only after losing it. Having lived and worked in
societies with oppressive governments and having been treated as a second
class human being based on my country of origin, I do not take such
freedoms for granted. They are valued and savored every moment of life. The
United States has been a magnet for people loving freedom and opportunity.
For the most part, the Representative Republic has worked. But occasionally
democratic power of the people should rise to temper the representatives.
This is such an occasion. Let us rise to it!

Uncontrolled federal spending is stripping the future generation of
financial stability and hope. To add insult to the injury, the insidious
stripping of personal rights has begun. Let us remember that people get
used to doing without freedoms we take for granted here. The Russian people
actually seem to want to return to communism and do not mind losing
personal freedoms in return of state-provided cradle-to-grave womb-to-tomb
support and control. It can happen here too.

     "With the first link, a chain is forged. The first speech
     censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied,
     chains us all irrevocably."
     - Picard [ST:TNG IV "The Drumhead"]

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