My friend Joe Coon, a soldier deployed to Iraq, recently enjoyed a bit of leave back in Portland, Oregon. While there he was interviewed in the Willamette Week Online. His views should be interesting to anyone who is following events in Iraq.
My friend Joe Coon, a soldier deployed to Iraq, recently enjoyed a bit of leave back in Portland, Oregon. While there he was interviewed in the Willamette Week Online. His views should be interesting to anyone who is following events in Iraq.
“So as a libertarian, doesn’t it piss you off that somebody is censoring your communication?
At first I was pretty angry and upset. I didn’t want to continue writing if I had to do it with someone looking over my shoulder”
Loaded question, no? At the very least incredibly innane.
How different is this from the case of employers firms requiring their employees not to disparage their colleagues or release confidential memos on their blogs? I’m sure Ed Crane would have something to say to Tom Palmer if Tom were consistently to knock Cato on this blog. And I’m sure my department chairperson would have something to say to me if I were consistently to disparage my colleagues on the group blog to which I contribute.
I’ve followed Joe’s blog occasionally for a while –both before and after he took it down and then put it back up. I didn’t get the impression that he was complaining about censorship, but that he was annoyed about having someone one look over his shoulder. That seems pretty understandable for a libertarian or for a socialist or for a conservative –no one would actually like that. But I think he understood why his superiors want to do that, since the people who want to do him harm can also read blogs and you would not want to give them any useful information, even if only by accident. Independently of all of that, I very much respect and admire him for his blogging and also for his work to help the locals with deliveries of shoes, toys, and other helpful items in what must be an otherwise bleak war zone. And that has nothing to do with my views on the people at the top who sent him there. I don’t admire them, but I do admire him.