Responses

[isabella_and_benedict at mail.utexas.edu]

>Greetings from Hossein!
>
>I confess to being a little startled at the tempest which Mr. Litchfield's
>postings and mail have aroused.  It has been more than a few years since
>I resided in Ansteorra, but I can't imagine that things have changed so
>radically that a realm which has for many years prized the rights of its
>subjects to free speech, even if that speech is, to the tastes of some,
>crude and rude, should now endorse reprisals of any sort against the
>honest expression of opinion.  I happen to think (from his postings -- I
>don't think I've ever actually met Mr. Litchfield) that the gentleman in
>question is something of an ass; but the notion that some would urge the
>list to discipline him for his remarks, or take the matter to the Crown or
>nobility for action, is repugnant to what I understand to be a fundamental
>Ansteorran tradition of freedom.
>
>Some are offended by Mr. Litchfield's invective and profanity.  That is
>no ground for censorship of any kind.  The Board was offended as hell when
>Claryce published the petition for impeachment of the Board in the Black
>Star, but most Ansteorrans were united in outrage when the corporation
>threatened to discipline her for it.  The simple point is that the free
>exchange of ideas is in principle so valuable a good that we cannot allow
>hurt feelings or offended sensibilities set standards which restrict that
>exchange.  Mr. Litchfield is a small example of a fundamental principle
>which Ansteorra's defense of Claryce's courage enshrined on a higher and
>more noble level; but we are unlikely to have the one if we exclude the
>other.  Fundamental principles are like that.
>
>Hossein Ali Qomi
>Baron, Lion of Ansteorra
>(Gregory Rose)
>

My only thought on this is that the Board was the minority.  Ansteorra was 
the majority.  Mr. Litchfield is, in this case, the minority.

                                                Isa
Mundanely: Staci L. Pelham     SCA:  Isabella de Foscari

*Give me silence and I will out dare the night!*
                       -Kahlil Gibran