At the outset, I am against internet filtering - as proposed by Senator Conroy.

However, I think it is a logical fallacy (or a case of ‘ignoratio elenchi’) that Kerry Miller and others deliberately attempt to change the subject or divert attention.

Miller (and some others) presents an argument against internet filtering that may in itself be valid, but I don’t think her, some posters, or even Syd Walker, address the real issues raised by Hamilton.

Debate any issues you like: pornography, hate, illegal wars, sex, cruelty, obscenity, poverty, health/disease, religion, politics, anorexia, diabetes, euthanasia, GM, nanotechnology, add your own – they are all ethical issues ... but they are red herrings nonetheless, particularly when semantics and definitions confuse the issues, or the issues themselves are taken out of context.

Without question, some people have neither the capacity nor ability to look after themselves, or indeed others in their care ... and even less capacity for those not on their care. Still, others couldn’t give a toss about their neighbours or other members of their society. What we do and how we behave has its consequences. Are we happy in the direction our society is going? Some would say no.

What Hamilton is doing is challenging all of us who live in a modern, democratic society ... to question our own actions and beliefs. Freedom does carry with it a measure of responsibility, anarchy doesn’t.

Q&A wrote:

"What Hamilton is doing is challenging all of us who live in a modern, democratic society ... to question our own actions and beliefs. Freedom does carry with it a measure of responsibility, anarchy doesn’t."

Anarchy carries a considerable responsibility. Anarchy means without government. Without the big daddy of government to keep us in line we are responsible for our own acts.

Just as atheists behave morally without big daddy God watching anarchists can be quite responsible without big daddy government watching. Some responsible anarchists are Henry Thoreau who went to jail rather than pay taxes to support what the considered an unjust war, Albert Camus who criticised Stalin when other members of the French left were silent, the many anarchists such as George Orwell who went to Spain to fight the fascists and Leo Tolstoy, a Russian Nobleman, who turned over profits from his writing to help persecuted Jews in Russia.

One motivation to becoming an anarchist is concern for humanity oppressed by government.

One can act responsibly through fear of punishment or an inner feeling that one should do the right thing.

In Brisbane there are three groups of anarchists: anarchosyndicalists who are concerned for the rights of the working man, humanist anarchists whose concerns stems from the consciousness of the abuses of religion and Catholic anarchists in Dorothy Day House who take seriously the words of Jesus regarding peace and turning the other cheek. The Catholic anarchists oppose militarism and have gone to jail as a penalty for their protests.

Watch out! There may be an anarchist acting responsibly near you!

david f proves Hamilton's (and my) point ... the plot thickens even more.

Q&A:
"Without question, some people have neither the capacity nor ability to look after themselves, or indeed others in their care ... and even less capacity for those not on their care"

Syd Walker cites Clive's main argument as:

“What’s so special about the internet? All but the most unthinking libertarians accept censorship laws that limit sexual content in film, television, radio, books and magazines. Yet the hysterical response from the internet industry and libertarian commentators to the Government’s proposal to require ISPs to filter heavy-duty porn shows how the internet has become fetishised.”

Syd's response is along these lines:

The world wide web is without precedent. The analogy with most other media does not hold up. If you are going to make an analogy then the best one would be the postal service. Censoring the WWW is more like censoring a public mail service. Big Media is controlled by a handful of people. The web is grassroots information liberation. Any censorship means that some of the vast array of web pigeon holes may be blocked without us knowing what is being blocked. This directly threatens the most significant information liberation experiment in the history of humans.

Also Syd's section about the impossibility of defining a hate site is very good - not as an exposure of Clive's position (CH does not support censorship of such sites) but as an exposure of Clive's thinking (for unthinkingly suggesting that such a category is definable)

The core issue is this: Do we dare to be free? Being free does mean being exposed to unsavoury things. Do we as adults want some other adults to protect us from those unsavoury things, without even full knowledge of what they are.

If another adult is going to protect me from unsavoury things then I want to know why that adult feels that he or she is superior to me? Why does that adult feel that he/she can handle freedom but I can't?

Q&A, I think you owe it to us to explain a little further why david f has "prove(n) ... (your) point", that is, unless you are trying to imply that simply because that david f has defended the political philosophy known as 'anarchy' that he is necessarily a ratbag with no credibility.

Personally I am not an anarchist, but I respect many who are (and hope they respect me). (I didn't realise that Orwell was an anarchist, BTW. I thought he was a socialist of sorts. Whatever, it would be interesting to ponder what Orwell would have to say about Clive Hamilton and mandatory Internet filtering, if he were around today.)

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Q&A wrote, "What Hamilton is doing is challenging all of us who live in a modern, democratic society ... to question our own actions and beliefs."

No, he's not.

For reasons know only to himself, he is abusing the trust that many, like myself, had placed in him in order to sell, on behalf of secretive, unconscionable, powerful vested interests, measures that would effectively take free speech away from ordinary people.

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Q&A wrote "At the outset, I am against internet filtering - as proposed by Senator Conroy."

If this outrage is to be stopped, we will need to adopt an attitude that is a little more than just an apparently academic and philosophical objection to it.

We need to be bloody angry, and particularly angry with people like Clive Hamilton who seem, as Syd Walker pointed out (http://sydwalker.info/blog/2008/11/26/clive-hamilton-me-sex-lies-hate-censorship/), to be far more bothered by images of one form of alleged 'obscenity' being viewed by adults in the privacy of their own homes than by real and ongoing obscenities of hundreds of thousands of people having been killed and maimed since at least 1990 on the basis of such lies as the 'incubator babies', the official US Government Conspiracy Theory (see http://www.911oz.com ) and Iraqi WMD's.

So, again, I urge everyone who values free speech and democracy to attend those rallies against mandatory Internet Filtering on Saturday 13 December (see again, http://wearechange.org.au for further details).

When a person openly refuses to obey a law on the grounds that the law is unjust that person is committing an act of anarchy.

Henry Thoreau wrote his "Essay on Civil Disobedience" after reflecting on the meaning of his being put in jail for refusing to pay a tax to support the Mexican War which he thought was unjust.

Thoreau influenced Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. King led people in refusing to obey the unjust laws requiring segregation of people by race, and Gandhi led people in refusing to pay the Salt Tax required by the British occupiers of his country.

George Orwell fought in the P.OU.M., a Spanish anarchist group, and was wounded fighting against the fascists, His book, "Homage to Catalonia", tells the story.

Q&A's original post contrasted anarchy and freedom. Anarchy is the utmost freedom on the other end of the scale from totalitarianism. I fail to see how I made her or his point.