Re: OT posts, an answer, and my sarcasm button (you asked...!)

["Robert J. Hansen" <rjhansen@xxxxxxxx>]

> clarification.  But I maintain that it's only fair if *all* political
> speech is kept out.  My impression is that only (or mostly) the

To that, I have this to say:

1.  Life isn't fair.

2.  What is permitted on the list, by the listmaster, is not the same as
that which the community will permit.  This does not make us fascists,
hypocrites, or autocrats.  It just means we're a community.

It is not government's (e.g., the listmaster's) role to suppress,
establish or support speech.  If I want to goose-step through Skokie,
Illinois [*] singing "Springtime For Hitler", the government has zero
right to stop me.  But the people of Skokie are under no obligation to
make me feel welcome, to quietly accept my singing, to say "well, that's
all right then, your viewpoint is just as accepted as ours is"... the
government makes sure that the people of Skokie don't prevent me from
airing my views; the government does not, and cannot lawfully, coerce
Skokie into being quiet while I sing "Deutschland Ueber Alles".  :)

([*] Skokie is a predominantly Jewish town in Illinois which, at one
point, was home to a great many Holocaust survivors.  Hence,
goose-stepping through Skokie is... well.  Bad.)

> while right wing views (for example, contempt for the Geneva Conventions)

I think you're significantly misrepresenting the views of those of us
who hold skepticism towards the Geneva Conventions.  The Geneva
Conventions are predicated on the belief that it is, to some degree,
possible to fight war humanely.  I find that belief roughly equivalent
to a belief in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.  War is hell, it's
always been hell, it will always be hell, no amount of codification will
change that in any appreciable way, and to believe otherwise is folly. 
The only way to make war at all humane is to do away with it altogether.