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On 7/20/2020 9:13 AM, Rebecca Chandler wrote:
While I and others on the board do not agree with the
> contents of the letter, it is important to the integrity of the
> organization to allow our members to express themselves without censorship.

This is a statement with which I profoundly disagree. Mr. Nauck 
publishes a catalog of auction offerings, and he used to occasionally 
append his opinions on political matters to the catalog. There is no 
censorship of those expressions; he has an absolute right under the 
First Amendment to express those opinions and publish them in his 
catalogs, and I would vehemently oppose any attempt to censor their 
expression in those catalogs -- for example, by the denying to him of 
bulk-mailing privileges.

That doesn't mean or imply that ARSC is under any obligation to provide 
a platform for those opinions; it is not, and in my opinion it should 
not be. All opinions are not created equal, and this opinion at this 
time is inflammatory and potentially harmful. The editors may, at their 
discretion, grant the privilege of appearing in the newsletter to 
members who have expertise in a particular area. Mr. Nauck can claim 
particular expertise in the compensation curves appropriate for playing 
78 rpm records; he's co-authored a book on the subject. He does not 
carry any matching expertise in the enormously complex area of race 
relations in America; he's simply a guy with strong opinions on the 
subject. As I said, Mr. Nauck has an absolute right to hold those 
opinions, and to express them in the catalogs he publishes; if he wants 
to feature a record called "There's a Coon in the White House", as he 
did at the beginning of the Obama Administration, that's his right under 
the constitution, but I see no reason for the ARSC to provide him with a 
platform for promulgating those opinions, and think that the editors of 
the newsletter made a significant mistake by doing that.

Peace,
Paul Stamler

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