I don't know if this post was directed to me or not, but I give it a shot anyway.
Originally posted by Gwalchmai
Who is fit to judge when someone’s grief is strong enough to be worth respecting? How can a line be drawn at ‘family members only’ and not include anyone else? How can you say that one person’s grief is valid while another’s is not? Anyone willing to draw this line can only do so out of a center of egotistical conceit or a total lack of empathy.
From my part, this discussion what never a question of the right to grief or not, it's an irrelevanat issue IMO - the relevant question is whether somebody's grieve a public person should override other's right to state negative opionions about that public person.
As far as I have seen, nobody here has made neither negative nor positive comments about Reagan as a private person - none of us here knew him personally. We are all talking about Reagans
political career as the president of the US and I repeat what I have said in another thread that as a politican and leader over a powerful country, you are a public person who commit
public acts that affect many people outside your immediate private sphere. Thus you can and should be critisised publically for those acts, and this is a public internet discussion forum.
I don’t see how it’s so hard to refrain from posting negatives about the recently deceased in a thread that was becoming a place for the deceased’s admirers to praise him.
As I stated above, at that point the thread was neutral, it was not a thread where only admiration was allowed. That occurred when T' posted.
How is this censure? How can this be an assault on the right of free speech when it is as simple to open a new thread as it is to post in an existing thread?
Now I am not following you any longer. Censorship? Free speach? What on earth are you taking about, has anyone referred to that? I didn't see anything about censorship and free speach unless in T's reply to me which is a question, not a statement:
Originally posted by T'lainya
If it's that big of an issue or you feel that censored then feel free to contact Buck about it.
I can understand how a request to separate the good and bad discussions of Reagan might seem, to some, as a diminishing of one’s rights to self expression. But this is so small, so minor, so little! Those who would decide that their need to express themselves anytime, anywhere take precedence over the feelings of others, are telling more about their fundamental lack of respect for those they wish to express themselves to than they are making any sort of worthwhile point. What is so hard about showing a little respect and expressing your views simply by moving them to another thread? This way, you get the best of both worlds and can take the high road at the same time. Seems logical to me.
Again, I am not sure what posts you are referring to. If you read my post is the original thread, you will see that I disagree with T's request to
"have some sensitivity for those who admired him", not with her request to move political discussion to another thread. I have also, in later posts, disagreed with your, DWs and others opinion that critisism of Reagan should not have been posted there in the first place. If you read my posts, you will notice that I disagree with the general idea that critisism of a politician as a public person should be refrained because it may hurt somebodys personal feelings. You will also notice that I discuss equality in assessment and equal rights to post your opinions. Equality and "free speach"-issues are not the same. As I have pointed out several times, I wanted to rise questions regarding general principles about taking some but not everybody into consideration. To use another example, nobody thought we should take Fas or Morlocks potentially hurt feelings into consideration when critising the Talibans and Sharon and Israel - why are some SYM-members feeling take precedence over other's opinions, but not other SYM-members feelings? I think this is inconsequent, and I also think it is something fundamentally wrong with the idea that everybody should take responsibility over everybody's possibly hurt feelings. When you post at a public forum I think you are responsible both for what you post and how you react to other people's opinions.
However, I do think this paragraph clearly illustrates the issue I view as problematic at a principal level. You talk about fundamental lack or respect for the feelings of others, and here as I understand it, you refer to critising Reagan although some people here admire him.
Now, let me pose those two examples:
1. Thousands of people (and their families) who were jailed, tortured, raped and murdered by the Contras who Reagan supported with billions of $US as well as arms.
2. SYM-members who admired Reagan and feel hurt when others are saying bad things about him.
Please explain why case 2 should take precedence over case 1. Obviously you think it is more "sensitive" and "logic" to all the victims of the Contras to state that Reagan was a great man that you admired, that it is to a Reagan supporter to state Reagan was an horribly immoral politician. I strongly disagree with that - feeling hurt because people dislike a public person you admire is in IMO totally trivial compared to feeling hurt because people admire a present whos acts got your family killed.
IMO it is far from a "small, minor an litttle" thing that people here like and admire a president who aided the killing of innocent civilians because he disagreed with the governments in those areas and at the time had the idea that Nicaragua and El Salvador would pose some kind threat to the US.
And the issue I have discussed all the time regarding Reagan, and is still discussing is
why should we apply different rules and give different precedence to people's feelings. IMO, either everybody's personal feelings should always be taken into equal consideration, and then we cannot discuss any topic at all. Or, which is what I prefer, all personal opinions should always be allowed as long as it does not contain discrimination, personal attacks and other things that violate forum rules.
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