George:

While I would agree that Horowtz's 'facts' are dubious, some of his points are valid places to start a discussion. As the son of immigrants, I wonder why I should pay reparations. Also I wonder why all Americans of African dissent would be entitled to reparations, rather than just descendants of slaves. I wonder if the Cavalier Daily bans all 'opinion' ads, or just unpopular ones? Also their position that they are unwilling to put Mr. Horowitz piece through the same fact checking as an opinion piece that appears on an editorial page is just a way of saying they don't need to print opinions that they don't like. I usually do not like conservatives, but freedom of speech runs both ways. Newspapers always try to us the first amendment to protect themselves from the consequences of the things they print. This protection also means that unless they have a blanket ban on opinion advertisements, then their refusal of a controversial advert is in fact a form of censorship. The fact that Mr. Horowitz main purpose in attempting to run the ad was to point out this hypocrisy and get additional free publicity for himself is not relevant to the first amendments protection.

Steven Miller (electronic mail, April 2, 2001)