Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!blake!ogccse!verdix!mark From: mark@verdix.com (Mark Lundquist) Newsgroups: news.misc Subject: Re: Legislating courtesy Message-ID: <129@verdix.verdix.com> Date: 29 Nov 88 22:23:31 GMT References: <63028RWC102@PSUVM> Sender: netnews@verdix.com Reply-To: mark@verdix.com (Mark Lundquist) Organization: Verdix Western Operations; Aloha, OR Lines: 30 In article <63028RWC102@PSUVM> RWC102@PSUVM (R. W. F. Clark) writes: >Nancy Gould writes: > >[Referring to how wonderfully liberal and enlightened thing called censorship] > >>It's called politeness and consideration for the feelings of >>others. > >Neither politeness nor consideration for the feelings of others >can, or should, be legislated. One might think that referring "Legislated?" Legislation means enacting laws, in particular laws that pertain to how individuals are permitted to behave. What's at issue here is neither any kind of law nor the prohibition of any individual behavior. It's simply that moderating a newsgroup is a matter of judgement, and some of us think that the moderator _ought_ (in the ethical sense) to exercise a certain kind of judgement. >There is no law against being offensive. If there were, There's that 'law' thing again! Looks to me like a misapprehendin' of the issue. This isn't the first argument that has tended toward this kind of equivocation, starting with some sentence that we all agree with ("You can't/shouldn't legislate courtesy") and invoking it in a situation that is really quite different. (straw man mode on) OK, maybe you really meant 'prescribe'..."You can't prescribe courtesy"...But that might change the character of the argument substantially (like, it might begin to look highly question-begging).