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To: hchutch
Norman Siegel, a civil rights attorney who pressed the case when he headed the New York Civil Liberties Union, said the ruling was significant because it upholds anonymous free speech.

I don't see what is so important about having a right to anonymous speech. I hardly think our founding fathers would have had any regard for such a right, or any expectation that the first amendment would be interpreted to protect those not manly enough to expose their identity.

Remember, for the first hundred years of U.S. history, letting your neighbors know your vote was a condition for being granted the privlege of voting. The reason the anonymous ballot was adopted was not at all for privacy, but rather for prevention of vote buying. The theory, hotly disputed in the nineteenth century, was that if the vote buyers could not really know if you voted as paid for, they would not bother buying your vote.

It doesn't make sense to petition the government for redress of a grievance if you don't have the courage to sign the petition.

20 posted on 11/19/2002 7:58:46 PM PST by Steve Eisenberg
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To: Steve Eisenberg
I don't see what is so important about having a right to anonymous speech. I hardly think our founding fathers would have had any regard for such a right, or any expectation that the first amendment would be interpreted to protect those not manly enough to expose their identity.

James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay would strongly disagree with you.

They recognized their right to anonymous free speech when the originally published the Federalist Papers in that manner.

The Supreme Court has ruled that protecting anonymous speech has the same purpose as the First Amendment itself: to "protect unpopular individuals from retaliation ­and their ideas from suppression."

24 posted on 11/19/2002 8:08:07 PM PST by dead
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