A Letter to Esther

. . . I wish you would extend you analysis of morality and the web, though, and get onto more sophisticated and defensible ground. You said that there were healthy communities on the web that were nevertheless "immoral", such as Nazi hate groups. I would restrict the application of the term moral to acts and interpersonal behaviors, not ideas and words by themselves. If you really believe that races are unequal, I don't think it's immoral for you to say so. If we silenced the ignorant, how could we teach them? How would we know who to teach, or what most needed to be taught? I'd rather know where the Nazi's are and what they're saying than try to suppress them and force them underground where their resentment could build. I also want children to know that grown-ups can be more ignorant than children are and that they have to learn to block out falseness even if people are allowed to speak ugly nonsense.

I admired your father's participation in "A Glorious Accident" a few years ago, even if a lot of the show was hooey. I loved it when he quoted Berthold Brecht from memory:

Out of the libraries come the killers. Mothers stand despondently waiting, hugging their children and searching the sky, looking for the latest inventions of professors. Engineers sit hunched over their drawings: One figure wrong and the enemy cities remain undestroyed.

I too have a rather profound dislike of professors. Another of my favorite quotes is by Aldous Huxley from 1946:

Let us build a pantheon for professors. It should be located among the ruins of one of the gutted cities of Europe or Japan, and over the entrance to the ossuary I would inscribe, in letters six or seven feet high, the simple words: SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF THE WORLD'S EDUCATORS.

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Dean's Correspondence

	Correspondence with Paul [1966 - 1968]
	A Letter to Aunt Jean [1966]
	A Letter to William F. Buckley [August 3, 1970]
	A Letter from William F. Buckley [September 8, 1970]
	Letters to Judy [1977, 1985, 1997, 2007]
	A Letter to Heinz Pagels [June 2, 1982]
	A Letter to Teddi [1984]
	Letters to Heinz and Elaine Pagels [1984, 1988]
	A Letter to Tony Rostron [1985]
	Letters to Janet [1985]
	A Letter to Laurie [1985]
	A Letter to Leonard Albert [February 16, 1986]
	Letters to Marjorie [1987, 1988]
	Letters to Bob [1988, 1994, 1995, 1999]
	A Letter to the Bronx High School of Science [1988]
	A Letter to J. Amaran, Technical Advisor to the Indian Freeware Foundation [1988]
	Letters to Gail [1989, 1999]
	Letters to Mark H. [1989, 1991, 2000]
	Letters to the Members of the Ninth Street Center [1989, 2009]
	Letters to Prof. Daniel N. Robinson [1990 - 1993]
	A Letter to Fox 5/WNYW Television [1990]
	A Letter to Karl [1991]
	A Letter to Peter [1993]
	A Letter to John [1994]
	Letters to Hank [1994, 1997, 2002]
	A Letter to Jeff [1997]
	A Letter to Allan [1997]
	A Letter to Bill [1997]
	Letters to Alan [1997, 2004]
	Letters to Edmund [1998]
	A Letter to Edward [1998]
	A Letter to Jennifer [1999]
	A Letter to Jennifer [1999]
	Letters to Charlene [1999, 2000]
	A Letter to Lauren [1999]
	A Letter to Laurie [1999]
	A Letter to Steve J. [1999]
	A Letter to Steve Z. [1999]
	A Letter to Dr. John Allan Hobson [1999]
	A Letter to Eve [2000]
	A Letter to Cecelia [2000]
	A Letter to Ian [2000]
	A Letter to Arabelle [2000]
	A Letter to Gayle [2001]
	A Letter to Ellen [2002]
	A Letter to Ron [2004]
	A Letter to Don [2005]
	Letters to Ethan [2005]
	A Letter to Susan [2006]
	A Letter to Juliana [2006]
	A Letter to Dr. James Samuels [2008]
	A Letter to Richard [2009]
	A Letter to Leah [2012]
	A Letter to Harold [2013] You have allowed the phenomenal world to penetrate you deeply, and it's no surprise that this new intimacy overstimulates you, causing you great pain and consternation

The Paul Rosenfels Community G © 1997-2025 Rachel Bartlett
Formerly All content by Dean Hannotte except where otherwise noted. Subscribe to our RSS feed . Statistics by Site Meter.		Write to us at dean@hannotte.com. Join The Age of Enlightenment Book Club. This page was published on July 9, 1997, last modified on September 18, 2014, and last transpiled on August 28, 2016.
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A Letter to Esther [1997]

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Dean's Correspondence