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[Prev|Next|Home] Created 2/21/96 by haralds@inow.com (Harald Striepe)
Principle of Freedom
In the beginning of last week, I went through a wide range of
emotions.
My niece Chantal was born. Healthy, awaited and loved by her
parents, brother, sister, uncles, aunts, and cousins, she entered
this world with the customary deep breath and healthy scream.
After the first, excited phone calls, images were digitized and
flew across the net. And not just in our house, the refrigerator
featured colored print outs of the new arrival. Technology
invented in the first part of this century scattered our family
across the world. Technology invented during the latter part
brought it back together.
Then I heard of the signing of the 1996 Telecommunications Reform
Act with its "Decency " provisions. The Internet, which had been
a marvelously unencumbered avenue for communication and the first
world-wide community acting in real time, suddenly faced the
ill-defined, black walls of our governmental judgement. The
response of this community has been swift and clearly visible on
the net. But I am not sure, whether it has been articulated well
enough outside of it to have impact in the real versus virtual
world.
Reflecting on these experiences does not fill me with simple
emotions. Being a father myself, news of a new baby fills me with
an archetypal oneness with all that has been living on this
planet and all that is now. It also gives me a deep worry about
the future of our offspring, and that of all that respires around
us. What kind of world are we creating for our children? How
conscious are we about the life we make for ourselves? With our
limited minds, our narrow vantage point, what world do we think
this is? And what is it really?
Looking at the information flung into our culture, I understand
the concern about what our children hear and see before they are
able to make meaningful decisions on its context. I am
sympathetic to communities wanting to control the context of
public behavior. And, for my taste, the media in this culture far
too often take the easy way out to gain attention in the
information clutter they face by resorting to the profane and
choosing to feature more sex and violence instead of good story
lines.
But, there is a clear difference between how we control what we
see on billboards and in the general public - areas where one
cannot choose exposure - and expressions in areas were exposure
can be an element of choice like books, pictures, films, computer
programs and, yes, even tunable broadcasts. We can choose to read
or not to read a particular book, to tune or not to tune to a
particular channel, to visit or not to visit a particular web
site.
Totalitarian systems have always claimed to operate in the
interest of the people, which they claimed to understand and
protect best of all. They have moved from subtle restrictions of
intellectual exchange to whole scale suppression of any
expression counter to the opinion of the state. It not only
controlled people's thought, but also their action.
Our union is based on the principle that its power is derived
from its citizens. The sole purpose of the state is to protect
the individual's liberty, justice, and pursuit of happiness.
Although some powers are granted to the state by the individuals
to fulfill this task, the extent of this grant is to be severely
limited.
Some of these principles were deemed to important, and the fear
of the tendency of the state to grow its restrictive power over
the individual was so strong, that they were made explicit in the
Bill Of Rights.
The moment we are born we must inhale and exhale air - a
fundamental need for a our body to survive.
The moment our democracy was born we needed freedom of
expression, to see and hear information and express it to others
- a fundamental need for our minds and chosen body politic to
survive.
Freedom is a principle, because it is the basis of many other
decisions we make as individuals and society. Any time it is
abridged - no matter how honorable the intentions - democracy is
in danger! Overall, as humans we simply do not have moderation in
overwhelming others with our opinions.
Of course, it is easier and more efficient to let the few make
decisions for the many, to enforce a comfortable uniformity and
standards instead of troubling variety and the resulting
discourse. It is easier as parents to let the state take care of
how our children are raised and educated instead of working at it
as parents. For those of us who know what is best for all, it is
more satisfying to see a world carved to their views.
But it is our diversity in nature and thinking that has made us
thrive, grow, and progress. We only have to look to the history
of the USSR and its results to see what the suppression of
diversity and freedom of thought will bring.
Uniformity gives stability at the cost of progress.
Even more important: what we do on the Internet not only effects
us, but the world! In this environment the principle of
unabridged freedom of expression must be the absolute foundation.
If we limit it in one way, we have given the moral right to
others to limit it in their way.
And without diversity of expression this great social force that
allows individuals to find and gather in communities across the
world is doomed. It will stop being an avenue for intellectual
discourse and will be relegated to purely an avenue of commercial
exchange.
As a society, we have gotten into the habit of being concerned
about specifics, to seek quick, pragmatic results. The tenor of
one side is to deal with a problem they perceive - pornography on
the net that could be accessed by children without parental
involvement - by restricting the general freedom of expression.
The opposition wants that act repealed. Politicians wanting to be
elected talk about the same specific issues and their vague
stance towards them.
Politicians do not really talk about their principles, because
these are an unyielding human concept. And it is hard to find
oneself measured against them later. We have made compromise and
political deals a virtue!
The principle of freedom of expression, which is the foundation
of our democracy and ultimately our overall freedom and welfare,
neither allows compromise nor deals.
That is why the "Decency " provisions in the 1996
Telecommunications Reform Act and any acts like it are
fundamentally wrong.
Harald Striepe, February 20, 1996
ps After reacting with as my emotion as rationality in this essay
written as a layman, I ran across an extremeley informative
article in the March 1996 issue of Wired by William Bennett
Turner: What Part of "No Law" Don't You Understand? I highly
recommend reading it.
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⌐ copyright 1996 Harald Striepe. All rights reserved. Created with
UserLand's Clay Basket and Frontier. Maintained by Harald Striepe on the
Well, last updated on Wed, Feb 28, 1996 at 4:06 PM.
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