Quote:
Originally Posted by Worldwalker
I'm seeing two positions here:
1) Books should not be interfered with unless they're really disgusting.
2) Books should not be interfered with, because rights are more important than disgust.
Strip away all the emotional baggage, and that's really what the positions come down to. The fact that children are involved increases the disgust level; it doesn't move it from non-disgusting to disgusting).
There is the fundamental problem: how disgusting does a book have to be before people move from category 2 (not for me) to category 1 (not for anyone)?
Some people have tried to load the people advocating category 2 with highly negative images: those people (me included) favor pedophilia, don't care if children are raped, have no empathy, etc. I believe that's highly untrue. I don't think the people who think that are any less disgusted by the book. From where I sit, it seems some people are thinking that the book is so awful that it fits into a special category, and even free-speech advocates should understand that.
The problem is, from our point of view, it doesn't. It's on a continuum of undesirable things. I haven't seen anyone here deny that it's a horrible book. What concerns the free-speech advocates is who gets to choose what is too horrible.
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WW, I was going to walk away from this thread, but came back and saw this and want to answer this, because i respect you and enjoy your posts.
I'm a Free Speech Rights advocate, too. Big time! I'm a libertarian, hang with the EFF crowd, and no one is more against government interference than we are.
But I'm not calling for anyone's rights to be abridged.
No one has a First Amendment right to sell a book at Amazon.
Yet for every complaint about "emotional appeals" from the "anti-Amazon selling the pedophilia book" side, there are emotional appeals in the form of "freedom of speech" from the "anti-Amazon removing it" side.
It makes the discussion a muddy mess, because the apples aren't being sorted from the oranges, and people are rebutting one with another. Essentially straw-manning the arguments they don't want to face by brushing them off as anti-first amendment.
To me, this is about Free Speech and Free Market, and letting businesses listen and do what makes their customers happiest and serves them all best.
It's no different from a business that stops letting people smoke, its customers pitch a fit, and so it says, ok, smoking is allowed.
Don't those customers have a right to free speech and free association? But they're being bashed for exercising them.
On the subject of my posts, it's wrong for my argument to be repeatedly oversimplified and misrepresented to "oh, it's
too offensive to me, so ban it."
First, define ban. I've said repeatedly, I don't want government touching this.
Second, I gave a reasoned arguments and other variables that make this different from all the books being tossed out as the next victims.
I understand some won't agree.
But as I said, the proof is in the pudding: The uniquely overwhelmingly united reaction of Americans, and the response by Amazon.
But for those who fear it's no different from other highly offensive books, I will propose this challenge:
If any of the books everyone is spreading FUD about being "next" ever get removed by Amazon, well... name the bet! 
It's just not going to happen.
I promise you, not only are
Lolita,
Mein Kampf, the
Bible, Koran, Diary of Anne Frank,
Harry Potter, and all the others perfectly safe, but even books like the
Anarchist's cookbook.
And that's because the masses and amazon have demonstrated by their actions that they
can see the line. If any of those other books were threatened, too many of us would fighting for keeping them.
The only scary ones, to me, are all these people who
can't see that line and think there really is a logical step from this book to those.
And the only people demonstrating that failure of discernment are those who don't think Amazon should have removed this book.
Anyway - the bet is open - if anyone wants to take a gamble on who's right, we'll work something out. (not money - i think that's illegal.
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(no time to edit before I go, so forgive the length and errors.)