[WikiEN-l] Titanic, illustrated

Sun Apr 17 02:05:49 UTC 2005

Richard Holton wrote:

>On 4/16/05, Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
>  
>
>>Ray Saintonge said:
>>    
>>
>>>I prefer a
>>>Dostoevskian revolutionary who will hesitate to throw a bomb when he
>>>realizes that it would harm others beyond his intended victim.
>>>      
>>>
>>All hail to Fyodor, but really what harm can be caused by a good bit of
>>ridicule?  Are we simply to modestly avert our gaze when the king is so
>>keen to display his march brazenly down the street insisting that we pay
>>due deference to his kingly robes?  To fail to point out that he appears
>>to be stark bollock naked would be a gross failure of citizenship.
>>    
>>
>What harm can be cause by personal attacks, which we have a policy against?
>  
>
Having a policy on personal attacks is not what defines the harm.  
Rather, the policy exists because of the harm. 

Certainly kings and emperors leave themselves open to ridicule, but 
there are very few kings and emperors in the world and far more of the 
rest of us.  Ridicule is an integral part of military propaganda.  It 
was used in World War 2, the Korean War and the Vietnam War to 
characterize orientals whether they believed in their countries' war 
policies or not.  It is used in schoolyard bullying as a form a 
psychological abuse when a child is somehow different from the norm.  
For revolutionaries it tells me that they are more interested in 
personal power than in an ethical change to what ails a society.

Ec