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I don't think it's an effective strategy at all. You're building a coalition of 'support' based on vague, positive-sounding platitudes, and this precludes you
by Gormo 14y ago
I don't think it's an effective strategy at all. You're building a coalition of 'support' based on vague, positive-sounding platitudes, and this precludes you from being able to take any specific strategic action without damaging your 'support'.
See: modern politics, in which candidates are elected based on purely symbolic rhetoric, but actual policy-making is dominated by narrowly-defined factions that can act decisively toward specific goals.
- morsch 14y agoIt's a balancing act, no doubt. But for something like a declaration of internet freedoms I think it's fair to err on the side of being broadly representative. And I don't think it's anywhere as bad as you make it sound, it's ambiguous, but Don't censor the Internet. is not a vague, positive-sounding platitude.
- Gormo 14y agoSure it is; it's just a slogan. "Don't censor the Internet" - Who are you talking to? What constitutes censorship? What actual means will prevent censorship, and how can we implement them? You're just saying that censorship is bad, which is almost a tautology, because the term itself carries negative connotations with essentially everyone: people who do advocate what you might describe as censorship aren't describing their own position as censorship, and the fault lines in your base of symbolic 'support' will appear once you actually get into details and attempt to answer the questions above.
- morsch 14y agoThe same thing can be said about the bill of rights and similar documents, and there, fault lines do appear once you get into the details. That doesn't mean it's pointless to have these documents.