TNA-GOLD 1/TNA-GOLD - Volume 1.iso/24hours/timothy_.txt

Text File | 1996-03-11 | 6KB | 96 lines

[Prev|Next| Index] Timothy Randolph [e-mail] Thu, Feb 22, 1996
6:43:40 AM

Voices of Freedom

By Timothy Randolph
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After I emailed President Clinton to voice my distress over the
Communications Decency Act, I got an auto-mailer response that gee-whizzed
over the technology and told me that the president had received over a
million electronic messages before mine. I was told that, "Your concerns,
ideas, and suggestions are carefully recorded and communicated to the
President weekly with a representative sampling of the mail." My voice,
impossible to hear among the million, only counts as it contributes to the
blend. It is a speck of pigment in a very big bucket of paint.

The response from my congresswomen was also machine produced and told me
that for "security reasons" questions would only be answered by US mail. I
expect to get a fairly bland mail-merged reply after a couple or several
weeks. I like my congresswomen and don't much hold the impersonality and
inefficiency of her office against her. Her constituents elected her to a
position that is almost untenable. She must represent a collection of
people who she cannot begin to know.

George Washington, the President of the Constitutional Convention, spoke
only once to that convention on a substantive issue. The delegates had been
arguing over large or small congressional districts. Large district
proponents wanted the better known, more prominent men who could win
election in a big district. Those who wanted small districts wanted to
insure that congress would be responsive to the people. Washington settled
this by splitting the difference. Congressional districts would contain
30,000 men and women. Todays districts are just shy of 600,000.

The telecommunications bill is over 390,000 words. The Constitution with
the Bill of Rights is under 30,000 words. I wish that more of congress and
the media had spotted the terrible implications of the CDA provisions of
the larger act, but I am not surprised that they did not. The
administration of large staffs, the degradation of continually fundraising,
the sheer number and bulk of the laws put before them require that our
congresswomen and men themselves have a difficult time being good citizens.
They must take a great deal on faith.

We live in a bureaucratic society that makes citizen based democracy
impossible. As a mass we occasionally scream "NO!" and more often sigh
"okay," but usually we cannot even generate that much of a voice. Our
collective political grunts are divined and filtered through the mind of
the capital and reported back to us as the popular will. In a country of
250 million there is nothing any one of us can do to alter this social
fact. We must accept that there is much that is important to us that we
cannot personally know. Whether it regards the quality of our water or the
honesty of our elections, we necessarily take much on faith and hope that
on those and other important issues there are some who are paying attention
and willing to scream for our attention if needed.

Because faith is such a crucial component of our democracy and because we
have to rely on others for so much of what we know, freedom of speech has
gained a new significance. The internet is a medium that allows us to keep
one eye open to the larger world as we tend our own gardens. One voice can
get the attention of two or three more and eventually anyone from the
multitude who cares to be concerned can be. Even if a voice is bypassed by
most of the world it is not violated. It remains posted and intact. It is
not merely a speck of pigment in the larger bucket.

The Revolutionary era was the age of the pamphlet. A writer could have his
say, and if it resonated, it would be posted, copied, pirated and
universally distributed. In 1776 Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" sold over
500,000 copies in a population of less than two million free whites. This
ability for an individual to get a message out could not be reproduced in
the age of the newspaper, which was transitory, or the novel, which is
narrowly cast, or television, which is controlled by and for wealth. The
internet holds the potential to recapture the power of the pamphlet. A
small voice can reach a large audience; actually, a large audience can seek
out the small voice. And many voices can combine to present a clearer
message than the auto-mailers of congress and the whitehouse can now
understand.

We are too lazy with our rights. Having developed the habit of taking much
on faith, we trust congress or the courts or someone to protect freedom of
speech. We take on faith the right that allows us to take so much else on
faith. No congressman or woman should accept committee reports or staff
recommendations on any provision that abridges our most fundamental
political right. No citizen should sit idly while those rights are set
aside in the name of progress and commerce. Even if you have nothing to
say, there will be something you need to hear. The internet is not a
cure-all for the ills of a mass society. All it does is allow each of us a
little more room to speak and listen. Freedom is as much an act of creation
as it is the absence of restriction. No medium can make one think for
oneself or keep an ear open to the world. By asserting our rights to speak,
listen and think on this subject we can start the wave of communication
that will be heard and our rights will be restored.

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