A Forum for Vigorous Debate, Cornerstone of Democracy

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A FORUM FOR FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND VIGOROUS DEBATE, CORNERSTONES OF DEMOCRACY
[For the journal--guidelines, focus, etc.--go to www.theamericandissident.org. If you have questions, please contact me at todslone@hotmail.com. Comments are NOT moderated (i.e., CENSORED)!]
Encouraged censorship and self-censorship seem to have become popular in America today. Those who censor others, not just self, tend to favor the term "moderate," as opposed to "censor" and "moderation" to "censorship." But that doesn't change what they do. They still act as Little Caesars or Big Brother protectors of the thin-skinned. Democracy, however, demands a tough populace, not so easily offended. On this blog, and to buck the trend of censorship, banning, and ostracizing, comments are NEVER "moderated." Rarely (almost NEVER) do the targets of these blog entries respond in an effort to defend themselves with cogent counter-argumentation. This blog is testimony to how little academics, poets, critics, newspaper editors, cartoonists, political hacks, cultural council apparatchiks, librarians et al appreciate VIGOROUS DEBATE, cornerstone of democracy. Clearly, far too many of them could likely prosper just fine in places like communist China and Cuba or Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Russia, not to mention Sweden, England, and Austria.
ISSUE #47 PUBLISHED MAY 2024. NOW SEEKING SUBMISSIONS FOR ISSUE #48.

More P. Maudit cartoons (and essays) at Global Free Press: http://www.globalfreepress.org

Friday, October 9, 2015

Joshua Wolf Shenk, Black Mountain Institute

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Sent Oct. 7, 2015

To Joshua Wolf Shenk,
As a new board member of PEN, might you actually be open to criticism against PEN?  Probably not.  If so, please do read my two essays on PEN:  
http://globalfreepress.org/contributors/usa/g-tod-slone/3415-pen-an-ethical-consideration

http://globalfreepress.org/contributors/usa/g-tod-slone/3825-pen-an-ethical-consideration-part-ii

Also, check out the front cover of The American Dissident which featured PEN associates as wielders, not of pens or swords, but of cocktails:  
http://theamericandissident.org/orgs/pen_new_england.html

Yes, I know, I’m a nobody and you’re an everybody.  I’m a go-against-the-grain, you’re a ladder climber.  Any possibility of “getting together”?  Likely not!  

In any event, your P&W interview will probably inspire me to satirize you in a new P. Maudit cartoon, which will then be published in a forthcoming issue of The American Dissident.  After all, what other literary journal would publish such satire?  The answer to that question sums up the sad state of American literature today.

That said, why not get your University of Nevada, Las Vegas library to subscribe and be the only institution in Nevada to do so?  After all, where else might we’re-doing-such-a-great-job writers, poets, and professors find satire with their regard??? 


PS:  SILENCE is always the best response of those in power--political, literary, cultural, academic et al --when criticized with the sledgehammer of truth.

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