On Nov 2, 6:05 am, Sound of Trumpet HotPOP.com>
wrote:

Imagine that, in the mythical nation of Freedonia, it is considered
gracious for guests to belch after eating as a way of showing the host
that they enjoyed the meal. Suppose you didn't know this, and you were
visiting the home of a Freedonian dignitary in the company of some
diplomats from the U.S. State Department. If, after the meal, these
diplomats began to belch, chances are you would belch also. They were
providing you with valuable information. On the other hand, suppose
you were in the same home in the company of some rather rude and
brawny young men who were introduced to you as members of the
Freedonian Olympic heavyweight wrestling team. If these behemoths
belched after their meal, my guess is that you might not go along with
this behavior. That is, you would probably consider this an act of bad
manners and would avoid belching. However, if they glared at you for
your failure to follow suit, you might indeed belch too-not because of
the information they supplied but because you feared rejection or
reprisal for refusing to be a good sport by going along with their
boorish
behavior.

I would suggest that conformity resulting From the observation of
others for the purpose of gaining information about proper behavior
tends to have more powerful ramifications than conformity in the
interest of being accepted or of avoiding punishment. I would argue
that, if we find ourselves in an ambiguous situation wherein we must
use the behavior of other people as a template for our own behavior,
it is likely that we will repeat our newly learned behavior, without a
cue, on subsequent similar occasions. This would be the case unless,
of course, we later received clear evidence that our actions were
inappropriate or incorrect. Thus, to go back to our example, suppose
you are reinvited to the home of the Freedonian dignitary for dinner.
But this time you are the only guest. The question is: Do you or don't
you belch after the meal? A moment's reflection should make the answer
perfectly clear: If you had belched after the first meal at his home
because you realized it was the proper thing to do (as would have been
the case had you dined in the company of the diplomats), you would be
quite likely to belch when dining alone with the dignitary. However,
if you had belched the first time out of fear of rejection or
punishment (as would have been the case had you dined in the company
of the wrestlers), you would almost certainly not belch when you are
the lone guest. To go back to Sam and the political candidate on
television, you can now readily understand one of the many reasons why
it would be so difficult for us to predict how Sam would actually vote
in the election. If he had been merely going along with the group to
avoid punishment or to gain acceptance, he would be likely, in the
privacy of the polling booth, to vote in opposition to the view
expressed by his acquaintances. If, on the other hand, Sam had been
using the group as a source of information, he would almost certainly
vote against the candidate that he had initially preferred.

The Social Animal - Elliot Aronson - 8th Edition 1999
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0716733129/

It is sometimes suggested that we distinguish offending from harming.

But surely it is implausible to think that the giving of offense is
never harmful to the offended party. People may be deeply offended at
witnessing what they regard as immoral or obscene acts and behavior. A
deeply religious person may be significantly pained by seeing or
hearing about what he regards as a sacrilegious speech or play.
Virtually anyone in contemporary Western societies would be disgusted
by public defecation. In at least some such cases, the offense given
can be not only upsetting but can induce rage, affect health, and
perhaps even alter the course of a person's life, e.g., as when
someone makes it her or his life work to stamp out pornography.

Can the claim to liberty be reconciled with the claim to be safe from
constant offense? A first step at reconciliation would involve
distinguishing easily avoidable from unavoidable offensive acts. If
the act or behavior that is regarded as offensive can be avoided with
a minimum of effort, it is not unreasonable to expect those who object
to make the minimal effort required. Surely, liberty is of great
enough value to outweigh the minimal effort required to avoid offense.
Thus, having sexual relations on the subway during rush hour may be
legally prohibited. Sex between the proverbial consenting adults in
private should be beyond the scope of the law. Anyone should be free
to watch a pornographic movie if they so wish but such freedom should
not extend to lurid billboard advertisements that passers-by cannot
help but witness.

How exactly is the boundary between the avoidable and the unavoidable
to be drawn. It is doubtful if any precise formula can be constructed
that then can be applied to cases in a mechanical fashion. In
practice, the boundary should be established by democratically enacted
statute, as applied by the judiciary. However, there are limits on how
far democracy may go here. These limits are set by the value of
liberty itself. In view of the importance of individual liberty, the
burden of proof is on those who would limit it to show at least: (a)
that the allegedly offensive behavior cannot be easily avoided; (b)
that it is not feasible to provide a restricted area where the
behavior in question need not be witnessed by the general public; (c)
that the behavior is widely regarded as deeply offensive in the
community as a whole; and (d) that the allegedly offensive behavior is
not the expression of an ideology or ideal that ought to be protected
under the heading of free speech. We also should remember that since
any act may offend someone, we cannot prohibit all offensive behavior
without surrendering liberty entirely.

In practice, the courts often have appealed to the standard of what
the community in general finds offensive, obscene, or revolting. The
trick, which has not yet been performed satisfactorily, is to
characterize the relevant community properly. Presumably, one should
not define the community so narrowly that the showing of the very same
movie is allowed in one and prohibited in the other of two neighboring
suburbs. Yet one might not want to define the community so broadly
that what is permissible on 42nd Street in New York City must also be
permissible in an Amish community.

It is reasonable to conclude that the guidelines sketched above should
be interpreted as placing a heavy burden of proof on those who would
restrict liberty to minimize offense. This is a moral judgment
concerning the importance of liberty that we hope is warranted in view
of the arguments for liberty in Chapter Three, as developed in later
sections of this chapter.

The Individual & the Poliical Order
An Introduction to Social & Political Philosophy
-Norman E. Bowie & Robert L. Simon
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0847687805/

The Bandwagon is a fallacy in which a threat of rejection by one's
peers (or peer pressure) is substituted for evidence in an
"argument."

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/bandwagon.html
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ad+populum

At this point in the article it would have seemed better if the author
would have created a list of criteria that might be used to determine
just what is obscene and what is acceptable.