If I may...  It is his opinion.  It has no bearing on you unless you
  let it.  If he /appears/ to want other views to be banished, what
  are you saying outright about his views?

| Mario's posting seems even more problematic, since he implicitly
| claims to retain the right to express his own views while wanting to
| suppress those of people he disagrees with.

  This is not problematic.  Ignore the "implicit claim" and consider
  what he says.  If you think he wants to suppress the opinions of
  those he disagrees with, what of it?  Why does it affect you?  What
  can he /do/?  Pointing it out, however, strongly communicates that
  you want to suppress /his/ opinion, and that is the only message he
  will receive -- that your reaction to something you do not want to
  hear is to suppress it, while at the same time denying his right to
  same.  Chances are, he never had a desire to suppress your opinion,
  so now he only observes that /you/ come out strongly in favor of
  denying him his right to express an opinion just because you think
  it is suppressive, and unless he is very mature, he will consider
  this a much worse threat than you considered his "implicit claim".

  Just let other people have their desires and needs.  Do not let them
  affect yours.  Wanting to control other people's desires and needs
  is the core problem.  If it has been "learned" from observing others
  who want to control your own desires and needs, you can do nothing
  better than to unlearn it and realize that /nobody/ wants to control
  your desires and needs, even if they appear to do so, and even if
  they are explicit: the only person who controls them is /you/, and
  the only way anybody can succeed in controlling them is by making
  /you/ change your own desires and needs.  Take charge of yourself,
  instead, and expect others to do the same.

  But let's try to avoid the meta-discussions about how other people
  try to manipulate your rights to express yourself.  Look around you.
  There is nobody /here/ who could possibly affect what you write or
  which opinions or views you express -- you have to invent them to be
  present with you.  No matter what anybody says, the only person who
  can make you feel any way at all from what you /read/ is yourself,
  after you have interpreted what you have read.  This is not fiction,
  however, and you have no obligation to enter the world of any author
  to take part in a discussion with them.  With nearly a year's worth
  of distance, I can confidently say this: The /incredibly/ bad people
  who frequent so many newsgroups have /zero/ effect on anyone unless
  they let them.

| This reminds me of the way this thread got started, which was when
| someone told the CLISP developers to lose the Menorah.

  Just as anyone is free to say they should, they are free to ignore
  it.  Unless someone can demonstrate actual damage from an action and
  that they were hurt despite taking reasonable precautions, their
  complaints /must/ be dismissed as frivolous.  Just because someone
  says he suffers, does not mean he does, and even if he does, that
  does not mean it is anyone's business.  Quite the contrary, a lot of
  really bad people successfully manipulate others by lying about how
  they suffer and exploit the natural tendency of better humans to
  feel compassion for sufferers, but in real life, we quickly withdraw
  our sympathy from people who hurt themselves in order to gain the
  sympathy of others, even more so after learning that they tried to
  blame someone.  On the Net, you have to take someone's word for it,
  and if they can accuse someone else who has been accused by others,
  as well, really bad people can make it appear as though they are
  hurt so they can manipulate other people into doing their bidding.
  Just because someone points out that something is not the way it
  ought to be, does not mean that they blame someone else for it or
  demand that they change it.

  I'd like to believe that people have managed to calm down and grow
  up in my absence -- I know that some people completely failed to do
  either as long as they saw my name and had an excuse not to -- and
  the first order of business for a mature, calm person is to accept
  full responsibility for his own emotions, reactions, /and/ actions.
  This is hard.  It is a lot harder than blaming someone for any or
  all of them.  But in the long run, it is much, much easier.

--
Erik Naggum | Oslo, Norway