Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site dciem.UUCP Path: utzoo!dciem!mmt From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) Newsgroups: net.politics.theory Subject: Forcing people to watch political debates Message-ID: <1619@dciem.UUCP> Date: Sat, 6-Jul-85 13:04:34 EDT Article-I.D.: dciem.1619 Posted: Sat Jul 6 13:04:34 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 6-Jul-85 14:13:22 EDT References: <8472@ucbvax.ARPA>Reply-To: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada Lines: 34 Summary: >Did it ever occur to you that the reasons the broadcasting of such debates >doesn't yield as great a profit as other programming is because the >public prefers watching other things? Should we force them to watch >these debates because you and others deem them important. Could such >actions be defended in the name of "freedom of speech?" Hardly. They >could in fact be attacked on the grounds that they violate this freedom. >(Note that I haven't said anything about how boring political debates >are. :-) > Mike Sykora Sykora raises a most interesting point. A society is most vulnerable when its members lack interest in its continuation. Demagogues can best control masses of people who have not considered the issues on which they rely. Perhaps an autocratic society should prohibit any political debate, to ensure its own stability, but it may be that a peculiar form of coercion might assist the prolongation of freedom in a democratic (or libertarian) society. Perhaps people SHOULD be forced to listen to opposing points of view on public issues, whether the debates are boring or not. (Note that I am not agreeing with this proposition, but think it worth analyzing in debate). The base question: Is overall freedom enhanced by the curtailment of some freedoms. All sides in the libertarian-socialist debate have agreed to a "Yes" on this one. The question then becomes segmented into a series of minor questions about which freedoms could or should be curtailed in order to maximize the overall freedom of individuals to have and to make choices. In my view, one freedom that should be curtailed is the freedom to be uninformed (or uneducated, perhaps). -- Martin Taylor {allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt {uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsri!dciem!mmt