Archivo

“What I Didn’t Tell Them, Being Ambivalent”

Leonard’s closing argument on censorship vs. free speech. He points out that “there are more good ideas than bad” and goes on to list many (French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Atomic Bomb) and that even advertising is protected speech (“The most depressing thing about advertising is that it works”) and pornography (snuff movies, etc.)….inserts a parenthetical good thought, “…aren’t there other ways to protect our children that don’t involve telling anybody what movies he can’t make?”

Then he closes making his final point:

Why then the First Amendment, my first principle? For the occasional Galileo; and maybe because we need to know what the next Lenin has to say so he won’t kill us by surprise; and also because no one has tried it before, no other nation that we’ve heard about, so why not give this Sacred Text a chance?

New word: seraphic = angelic, I suppose very angelic since derived from the word for the highest order of angels.

New learning: “There is more pornography, and less violence against women in Amsterdam than any other city in the world.”