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Posted by Immortalist on 10/01/91 11:43
"George Hester" <hesterloli@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:FX2Wf.35967$jf2.14245@twister.nyroc.rr.com...
> why?
>
Because I'm that dam good?
Actually that is a good question and one might ask; what reasons would one
have for collecting things or not collecting things? When would personal
preferences be extendable to others by trying to persuade them to also like
this or that. When does a description become a prescription? How often does
a suppposed fact translate to some that a person likes and others don't?
When do these activities limit other people's rights and become offensive?
It is sometimes suggested that we distinguish offending from harming.
But surely it is implausible to think that the giving of offense is never
harmful to the offended party. People may be deeply offended at witnessing
what they regard as immoral or obscene acts and behavior. A deeply religious
person may be significantly pained by seeing or hearing about what he
regards as a sacrilegious speech or play. Virtually anyone in contemporary
Western societies would be disgusted by public defecation. In at least some
such cases, the offense given can be not only upsetting but can induce rage,
affect health, and perhaps even alter the course of a person's life, e.g.,
as when someone makes it her or his life work to stamp out pornography.
Can the claim to liberty be reconciled with the claim to be safe from
constant offense? A first step at reconciliation would involve
distinguishing easily avoidable from unavoidable offensive acts. If the act
or behavior that is regarded as offensive can be avoided with a minimum of
effort, it is not unreasonable to expect those who object to make the
minimal effort required. Surely, liberty is of great enough value to
outweigh the minimal effort required to avoid offense. Thus, having sexual
relations on the subway during rush hour may be legally prohibited. Sex
between the proverbial consenting adults in private should be beyond the
scope of the law. Anyone should be free to watch a pornographic movie if
they so wish but such freedom should not extend to lurid billboard
advertisements that passers-by cannot help but witness.
How exactly is the boundary between the avoidable and the unavoidable to be
drawn. It is doubtful if any precise formula can be constructed that then
can be applied to cases in a mechanical fashion. In practice, the boundary
should be established by democratically enacted statute, as applied by the
judiciary. However, there are limits on how far democracy may go here. These
limits are set by the value of liberty itself. In view of the importance of
individual liberty, the burden of proof is on those who would limit it to
show at least: (a) that the allegedly offensive behavior cannot be easily
avoided; (b) that it is not feasible to provide a restricted area where the
behavior in question need not be witnessed by the general public; (c) that
the behavior is widely regarded as deeply offensive in the community as a
whole; and (d) that the allegedly offensive behavior is not the expression
of an ideology or ideal that ought to be protected under the heading of free
speech. We also should remember that since any act may offend someone, we
cannot prohibit all offensive behavior without surrendering liberty
entirely.
In practice, the courts often have appealed to the standard of what the
community in general finds offensive, obscene, or revolting. The trick,
which has not yet been performed satisfactorily, is to characterize the
relevant community properly. Presumably, one should not define the community
so narrowly that the showing of the very same movie is allowed in one and
prohibited in the other of two neighboring suburbs. Yet one might not want
to define the community so broadly that what is permissible on 42nd Street
in New York City must also be permissible in an Amish community.
It is reasonable to conclude that the guidelines sketched above should be
interpreted as placing a heavy burden of proof on those who would restrict
liberty to minimize offense. This is a moral judgment concerning the
importance of liberty that we hope is warranted in view of the arguments for
liberty in Chapter Three, as developed in later sections of this chapter.
The Individual & the Poliical Order
An Introduction to Social & Political Philosophy
-Norman E. Bowie & Robert L. Simon
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0847687805/
http://youtube.com/watch?v=y1fWNxZwIj4
> --
>
> George Hester
> _________________________________
> "Immortalist" <Reanimater_2000@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:uWWVf.2155$Aa1.315@dukeread05...
>>
>
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