Originally posted by
Christian
I am not familiar with the "Vern" situation and don't plan on looking into it. I was referring to the situation with Maggie (see my link above) although the Vern situation sounded similar, but I don't know or care to.
There may have problems with Vern and legitimate reasons to ban him, but just saying it is "right wing propaganda" would not be a valid one in my opinion. Your post above, Chris, is propaganda, just as mine in. They are attempts to influence people and move them away from their beliefs or at least challenge their current ones. What you call "propaganda" I would refer to as "challenging ideas". If I have the time and energy, I often welcome them as an opportunity to understand the world better and grow intellectually. They might educate me and lead me to new realizations, or I might wrestle with them and develop an even better understand about why my previous ideas were correct.
If you say that you are (1) a liberal, free-thinking individual who advocates the open exchange of ideas, but also say that (2) you are for limiting or marginalizing the speech of people who are: (any of these)
- right/left wing
- "anti science"
- "unhygenic"
- "biased", "propagandists"
- or any other simplistic label used to reduce other people's complex thoughts,
then, your support for #2, completely contradicts statement #1.