On Jan 21, 1998 08:46am, RON TAYLOR wrote to TOM RIGHTMER:
 RT> Tom, what you are advocating is extremely close to what we all fear... a
 RT> police state.  Who is to decide who needs to know what?  The government!
 RT> When you put that kind of POWER into the hands of someone, it WILL
 RT> corrupt them.  You will find that the "need" gets narrower and narrower
 RT> because as knowledge gets more scarce, the ones who _know_ get more
 RT> powerful and they will find reasons to limit more and more knowledge.
Public sentiment has a lot to do with the censorship issue.  Recently up here
we had a 16 year old blow his right hand off when he made an explosive device
using a book thought to be from the High School library.  The public went 
nuts,
fanned by the news media.  Finally the local PD held a new conference and 
eld
up the book.  It wasn't from the library, it was his chemistry text book.  
he
boy had taken an experiment and modified it by increasing the amounts of
chemicals involved.  You'd think that would be the end of that, but the news
media continued haranguing and the school district removed the books from the
"take home" list and kept them in the classroom.
 RT> Did you ever hear the phrase, "I'm from the government and I'm here to
 RT> help you"?  It's usually said tongue in cheek and for a very good
 RT> reason.
I used to have a partner that used a similar phrase, he finally dropped it 
when
he continually got chewed out for helping people with a citation :)
 RT> The bottom line is that we should censure _behaviour_ not censor
 RT> information.
Thats becoming a lost value.  More and more, it's always someone elses fault,
it's never the fault of an individual's behaviour.  As long as society is 
ent
that way, the loss or modification of our Constitutional rights is possible.
... Kendra.com - Internet for $14.95 a month
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