Subject: Re: Stop Internet Censorship!
From: Andrew Hofman <[email-masked]>
To: Multiple recipients of list <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 1995 02:50:07 -0500

At 08:29 PM 12/11/95 -0800, you wrote:
>Great, Andy!  Absolutely right on.  It's amazing, encouraging,--and in a 
>few instances disturbing--to see the reactions to this issue.  
>
>The people who are quickest to perpetrate Holocausts seem the quickest to 
>deny the possibility of their being such a thing as a Holocaust.  
>
>Mike McCool <[email-masked]> 

Prewar Germany represented the height of western civilization. It can be
difficult to appreciate now, but Germany at that time was regarded as the
ultimate in refinement. 1930's Dresden was compared to the Emerald City. Is
it any wonder that as the darkness crept in around them, people thought "It
can't happen here"?  With the new Party, the average person enjoyed more law
and order, modern roads, an end to unemployment. They welcomed these things
without understanding the terms under which they came. Losing a few freedoms
here and there was acceptable, when those freedoms mostly applied to
troublesome elements anyway. As before, law-abiding citizens had nothing to
worry about. But gradually, the definition of "law-abiding" was tightened.
More and more behaviors became unacceptable. Eventually, it went beyond mere
behaviors to ideas, and then to ethnicity. More and more information passed
through the hands of the government. Some people recognized these changes
for what they were, but they were mostly Jews or Communists and couldn't be
trusted anyway. It all happened so gradually at first, it was like watching
the hands of a clock. Who could have seen what it would lead to?

Ideas are power. They are at the core of everything we have. Depending on
how ideas are used can result in more bread or more tanks. The speed with
which ideas are now sent lends them greater power and momentum than ever
before. So inviting the government to regulate certain ideas, based upon how
unpopular they are, invites them to expand the definition of what needs to
be regulated, even when they promise not to. There's always some unpopular
new idea turning up that needs to be dealt with.

Don't expect an American version of the Nazi Party. It wouldn't be anything
so obvious. No hysterical, iron-fisted nationalism, but instead a form of
what I call "soft control". So much of our lives flows through data,
brute-force tactics aren't required. When troublemakers are hauled off, it
can be done far more quietly and efficiently than even the most ambitious
Gestapo man could have envisioned. User-friendly oppression. Have a nice day.

So if you don't like an idea you're hearing, switch it off. But for goodness
sakes don't ask the government to switch it off for you.