The Problem

      As you can see, the thinking and techniques of Hitler, Stalin, and Joseph McCarthy have not gone away, they've just changed clothes and picked a new target. That what they seek to do is in direct opposition to the principles expressed in the Bill of Rights they fail to recognize. The irony of their arguments being put forward in "the land of the free" is apparently lost on them.

In the past, computer game developers were caught off guard . . . In the future, we can continue to sit out the fight and hope for the best, or we can have a place at the table.     Daniel Greenberg "Playing Games with Washington: Government Report '98"

It's tempting, of course, to ignore them and hope that, like a bad dream, they'll just go away. The fallaciousness of their arguments and the extreme perniciousness of what they propose, namely to manipulate people by controlling what they can see and hear and what they do for fun, is so clear in the examples of repressive regimes past and present that it's hard to believe that any sane, rational person could take them seriously. That may be so, but unfortunately sanity and rationality don't have a lot to do with politics.        What's taken seriously in politics is power. Power in the form of many dollars or many voices. Those who would censor our lives and minds have already gained the ear of the media and the powerful. Nothing makes for hot publicity, it seems, like some good old fashioned fear-mongering.

     But we too can make ourselves heard. We can join one another--confederate, inform and support each other, write one hell of a lot of letters, and raise our voices together in a chorus that will come through loud and clear. 
      Invoking the concept of freedom in the name of computer gaming may seem over-blown, but it is precisely that, our personal freedom, that is at stake here. If we choose to play a particular game, it is a private act, and those who disapprove of it are under no compulsion to involve themselves. If you or I want to pursue happiness in this way, is that not our "inalienable right"?