ZGram - 3/14/2004 - "Don't overturn Western civilization"

[zgrams at zgrams.zundelsite.org]

>ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny:  Now more than ever!
>
>March 14, 2004
>
>Good Morning from the Zundelsite:
>
>Someone, presumably from Canada, sent me a ZGram's worth of quotes,
>titled "DON'T OVERTURN WESTERN CIVILIZATION! Quotations Which Should
>be Required Reading For Every Employee of the Canadian Human Rights
>Commission."
>
>What with the ADL, the Wiesenthalers and their ilk trying their best
>to get U.S. Attorney General Ashcroft to flex his dictatorial muscle
>and prosecute Mel Gibson for "hate," the quotes below speak a
>persuasive language.
>
>(Sage advice:  Forgive the Pavlovian reflexes - "...they know not
>what they do!"]:
>
>[Start]
>
>Group Libel
>
>If the purpose of the First Amendment is to insure a free flow of
>ideas, of what value to that process are utterances which defame
>people because of their race or religion?  Can't we prohibit group
>libel that merely stirs up hatred between peoples?
>
>Legal philosopher Edmond Cahn dealt with this subject in a notable
>address delivered at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1962.  If
>there were a prohibition against group defamation, said Cahn:
>
>The officials could begin by prosecuting anyone who distributed the
>Christian Gospels, because they contain many defamatory statements
>not only about Jews but also about Christians; they show Christians
>failing Jesus in his hour of deepest tragedy.  Then the officials
>could ban Greek literature for calling the rest of the world
>'barbarians.'  Roman authors would be suppressed because when they
>were not defaming the Gallic and Teutonic tribes they were
>disparaging the Italians.  For obvious reasons, all Christian writers
>of the Middle Ages and quite a few modern ones could meet a similar
>fate.  Even if an exceptional Catholic should fail to mention the
>Jews, the officials would have to proceed against his works for what
>he said about the Protestants and, of course, the same would apply to
>Protestant views on the subject of Catholics.  Then there is
>Shakespeare who openly affronted the French, the Welsh, the Danes.
>...  Dozens of British writers from Sheridan and Dickens to Shaw and
>Joyce insulted the Irish.  Finally, almost every worthwhile item of
>prose and poetry published by an American Negro would fall under the
>ban because it either whispered, spoke, or shouted unkind statements
>about the group called 'white.'  Literally applied, a group-libel law
>would leave our bookshelves empty and us without desire to fill them.
>
>History teaches us that group libel laws are used to oppress racial
>and religious minorities, not to protect them.  For example, none of
>the anti-Semites who were responsible for arousing France against
>Captain Alfred Dreyfus was ever prosecuted for group libel.  But
>Emile Zola was prosecuted for libelling the military establishment
>and the clergy of France in his magnificent J'Accuse and had to flee
>to England to escape punishment....
>
>------------------------------------
>
>American Civil Liberties Union, Speech Should Not Be Limited, in Ann
>K. Symons and Sally Gardner Reed, Speaking Out! Voices in Celebration
>of Intellectual Freedom, American Library Association, Chicago and
>London, 1999, pp. 22-27, pp. 25-26.
>
>If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person
>were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in
>silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be
>justified in silencing mankind.
>
>------------------------------------
>
>John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), On Liberty, ch. 2 (1859)
>If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is
>that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox
>in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or
>force citizens to confess by word or by act their faith therein.  If
>there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not
>now occur to us.
>
>------------------------------------
>
>Justice Robert H. Jackson
>American libraries should be open to all - except the censor.  Let us
>welcome controversial books and controversial authors.  For the Bill
>of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty.
>
>------------------------------------
>
>John F. Kennedy
>We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant
>facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values.
>For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and
>falsehood in an open market is afraid of its people.
>
>------------------------------------
>
>John F. Kennedy
>A popular government, without popular information or the means of
>acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps
>both.  Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean
>to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power
>knowledge gives.
>
>------------------------------------
>
>James Madison
>Believe me, the pro-filtering forces don't want to filter just
>sexually explicit web sites.  Filtering sexually explicit sites is
>just their entrée into choosing what's inappropriate for the library
>to provide access to.  First they'll want us to filter out sexual
>pictures, then erotic stories, then information about birth control,
>then web sites promoting witches and Satanism, then pro-Communist web
>sites, and then they'll have been successful in turning the clock
>back to Eisenhower's day.  I just hope we can be as strong as the
>General in defending our users' right to choose for themselves what
>they will and will not access.
>
>------------------------------------
>
>Charles Harmon, Editor, Neal-Schuman Publishers
>It sometimes seems that the appetite of the censor is insatiable.  It
>is one of the most elite forms of human activity since it presumes
>that some of us are so wise, so moral, and so pure that we have the
>right to determine what others read, see, and believe.  If history
>teaches us anything, it is that no one, or no group of people, has a
>monopoly on what is truth, what is liberty, and what is morally
>certain.
>
>------------------------------------
>
>Burton Joseph, Attorney at Law, Chicago
>If librarianship is the connecting of people to ideas - and I believe
>that is the truest definition of what we do - it is crucial to
>remember that we must keep and make available not just good ideas and
>noble ideas, but bad ideas and silly ideas and, yes, even dangerous
>and wicked ideas.
>We need to keep dangerous and wicked ideas alive: Humankind must
>never forget that sometimes we have slaughtered our neighbors, lied
>to our children, studied hatred and turned it into legend.  We must
>remember these things.
>But we also need to remember that some ideas thought worthless today
>may turn out to be the bedrock of tomorrow's truths.  We need to keep
>the whole of human history ever before us, recalling that the right
>of women to vote was once considered an idea both silly and
>dangerous; that the idea of one human being owning another was once
>as much a part of daily life as getting up with the sun in the
>morning; and that freedom to worship the Creator in one's own way was
>such a radical idea that people who believed in it had to found an
>entire new country to practice it - our country.
>
>------------------------------------
>
>GraceAnne A. DeCandido, Blue Roses Editorial and Web Consulting
>I have been there when librarians defended material that I am quite
>certain they personally found repugnant.  In their resolute way,
>these librarians always seemed to me the truest champions of
>democracy.  We must recognize that there is an enormous difference
>between what people think and say and what they do.  As Americans, we
>are entitled to think and express what we wish.  As librarians, we
>must uphold the belief that the best antidote to a bad idea is
>another idea, to a hateful book, another book.
>Censorship knows no better champions than people who believe they
>alone have the right answer.  The natural next step for many, it
>seems, is to try to silence those who disagree.  This pressure can
>come from anywhere in the political spectrum.  What zealots often
>fail to comprehend is that libraries exist to preserve the record of
>what has happened in the world.  Denial - of the horrors of American
>slavery, of the Holocaust, of atrocities in the Balkans, of the lies
>of communism - depends on the obliteration of the record.  Those who
>would know the truth must be able to see for themselves in libraries
>and archives the hatred and lies that have been held up as truth, and
>we must trust that a free and educated people will see these
>phenomena for what they are.
>I want to know that somewhere, in some library, I will always be able
>to find examples of the worst racist, homophobic, and sexist
>material.  In time, these materials become their own worst enemies;
>they stand as indisputable evidence of what the objects of their
>hatred endured.
>But "defend to the death"?  Isn't that just too extreme?  I'm not
>suggesting that librarians should be prepared to die so that
>neo-Nazis can spread hate speech, but I do believe that once examples
>of their hatred have been cataloged and preserved in the appropriate
>collections, no one is entitled to remove them.  A world that
>suppresses unpopular views, no matter how repellent, is a world
>American librarians cannot inhabit.
>
>------------------------------------
>
>Leonard Kniffel, Editor, American Libraries
>Today, as always, there are some people and groups who are all for
>freedom of information - except information they find offensive.
>That attitude has forever been the ink drop in the waterglass of
>freedom, whether the contaminating cloud is sponsored by a
>self-serving dictator or a sincere religionist in a democracy.  Those
>who wrote our First Amendment knew that the heresy of yesterday is
>often the proven authenticity of today.  But every generation has had
>to fight to maintain that reality for its own freedom.
>
>------------------------------------
>[END]