WE ALL GET THEM — email requests to petition some organization to do something; either support something or banish something.
As a general rule, I delete such emails.
Why?
First, I doubt they do any good. It’s too easy to buy a program that will blast out thousands of emails to a specific destination. No one can take email petitions seriously. Likewise, “copy, sign, and send” letters.
Even Web petitions where a petitioner is required to provide name and email address are easy enough to fake.
That’s not to state there are no good causes; only that email and Web petitions are, in my opinion, a waste of time.
They also tend to get the signer’s name and contact information into someone's mailing list. Thanks, but no thanks.
I also have a problem with petitions that try to remove stuff.
Granted, there is a lot of anti-this and anti-that on the Web.
But as long as the haters stop short of calling for maiming and murder of this or that group, there is a free speech consideration. If I shut down Joe’s free speech, Joe might try to shut down mine.
Besides, better to know your enemy.
It is NOT likely that a well reasoned response will change a hater’s opinion, but if it’s posted along with the hater’s rant, perhaps — just perhaps -- a reader once inclined to agree with the hater will have second thoughts and disavow the hater’s message.
There are many posts on the Web — Facebook, Twitter, and other unfettered social (and anti-social) media — that are offensive to me.
Even “innocent” posts might be found offensive by one or another group. Do they deserve to be shut down simply because what was posted offends me?
Let me be very clear: Calls to commit crimes against people and property SHOULD be removed. Posts calling someone a cretin or besmirching a person’s heritage, while stupid and inappropriate, are still to be tolerated. If the “victim” of the poster is sufficiently offended, he or she can haul the poster into court; libel and slander are civil crimes that can carry a heavy penalty. (What constitutes libel and slander varies by jurisdiction.)
While I might agree with the position of a person asking me to sign a petition against something, if there is a free speech issue involved, I’ll probably forego the petition. On the other hand, if the request to sign a petition is FOR something — more ice cream of Shavuot, for example — than I’d be inclined to add my name.
While I find hater’s deplorable (thank you, Mrs. Clinton), they have — at least in the U.S. — a Constitutional right to express themselves, however poorly and ignorantly.
PLAGIARISM is the act of appropriating the literary composition of another, or parts or passages of his writings, or the ideas or language of the same, and passing them off as the product of one’s own mind.
