roundtable: Re: Letters from `Jlehm@aol.com'

roundtable: Re: Letters from `Jlehm@aol.com'

Re: Letters from `Jlehm@aol.com'

Jeff Briggs (jbriggs@capital.edu)
Sat, 4 Mar 1995 04:57:37 +0500 

Date: Sat, 4 Mar 1995 04:57:37 +0500
From: jbriggs@capital.edu (Jeff Briggs)
Message-Id: <9503040957.AA03131@athena.capital.edu>
To: roundtable@cni.org
Subject: Re: Letters from `Jlehm@aol.com'


The response to such cowardly acts as 'Jlehm' commits is to publicize 
them, as you have correctly done, Fred and Curtiss.

     The flames (cybertalk not intended) fanned by Limbaugh, Liddy, 
Pat Robertson, Falwell, Helms, the Grinch, and too many others have 
infected thousands of people with the disease of hate. It is never 
absent from any society, because of the difficulty of educating the 
human animal. But the ignorant have heard that "liberal elitists" are 
among the educated, and when they stumble across unfettered, 
intelligent discourse (which this roundtable nearly always displays), 
and find views that contradict their manipulators, they employ threats, 
intimidation, and invective, since they feel inadequate to take part 
in the discussion.

     While Democrats, leftists, and liberals have often used fair means 
or foul against their opponents, one of the arguments I have made is that
Republicans, rightists, and conservatives are directly linked to racist,
facist, and authoritarian groups both in and outside the United States
who have used dirty tricks, intimidation, and even assasination routinely
to enforce their will, while rarely even mouthing the rhetoric of civil
liberties. Helms and Thurmond are literally racist; Buchanan has betrayed
fascist sympathies; and Limbaugh, Falwell, and Robertson use hate speech
against gays, liberals, and feminists all the time.

     Therefore the stupidities appearing in our discourse will increase.
The one thing all conservative talk shows have in common (with the
moderate exception of Crossfire, and possibly the McGlaughlin Group) is
that they brook no opposition to their reactionary views. They preach
the gospel that people who disagree are the enemy, and that discussion
with the enemy is treason. Therefore they will try to disrupt and 
destroy what we are doing, rather than taking part. 

     The best thing we can do is to continue talking to each other,
and express ourselves as fully and freely as we care to. The attack on
the CPB is not just a money issue, nor even just due to alleged liberal
bias. It is also anti-intellectual. They will go after other hotbeds
of intellectual ferment when those windmills are gored - universities,
publishers, record companies, magazines - -and the Internet. So let us
prepare, plan, and anticipate.

     We are in a McCarthy era now. After reading "Alien Ink", about
J. Edgar Hoover's 50-year campaign of spying, misinformation, black
bagging, smearing, and attacking the cream of American intellectual 
and creative talent, it would not surprise me if we are being 
continually monitored for subversion as well. Who cares? It's all 
stupid, and life's too short.

Jeff Briggs
<jbriggs@capital.edu>

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