Censorship: A rightie or a leftie problem?

May 9, 2016, 6:15 PM

It's been posited by a few P&R brain trusts that only liberals and the left engage in censorship.

You know the song and dance. People foolishly treat politics like their football team, and just like a fervent fan of a college team, they think only their rival commits atrocities while their squad is comprised of little angels.

So let's defer to someone who knows a lot about this stuff. In other words, me. Leftist as I am socially, I'm about as much of a free speech absolutist as they come, and I have to engage in this issue regularly in the real world.

And yes, I have the answer as to which side embraces censorship: the extreme left or the extreme right. You ready?

Are you sure?

They both do. Because they're extremists. It's a question as to what they want censored.

Of course communist and extreme leftist regimes engage in censorship. Extremists who crave power rarely want dissenting opinions. But they don't have to be people in power, either. We see leftists push for campus speech codes, "safe zones", and try to shout down or ban conservative speakers. Why? Simple. Immature, small minds can't handle dissenting opinions.

But that knife cuts both ways. It was only a few years ago when some of our local P&R monkeys, long since having retreated to their own message board, called for use of the Sedition Acts for any American who opposed the Iraq war. Or called for charges of treason for those who spoke out against Pres. Bush. Or just called for some retaliation in general to those who opposed their viewpoints. Again, small minds that can't handle opinions different from theirs.

Even their darling Bush said there should be "limits to freedom" in response to a cartoon that made fun of him snorting coke... which, you know, he did.

So who is the greater offender? Conservatives or liberals? I argue we can't truly measure that. Idiots reside on both sides of the aisle, and extremists + small minds will always push for the suppression of speech. Where a conservative wants to ban a book with ideas they aren't comfortable with, a liberal wants to ban a right-wing speaker at his college campus. Cataloging all the extremist morons on each side will be almost as tough as putting two of each animal on a boat.

Thus, it's an equally moronic statement to claim one side is an offender of censorship while turning a blind eye to their own side. Like people who are racist, I've found that people who censor content will never admit they're censoring it. They'll come up with some fancy explanation to justify their actions.

Usually that word is "inappropriate"... as if their definition of inappropriate supersedes everyone else's.

But for our wtrski... I mean, pawsnation and xtiger folks, here's some proof that your side is just as guilty. And in the case of book banning, your side is the greater offender.

http://www.theharrispoll.com/health-and-life/Censorship_2015.html

So, here's what you do. Don't be a small-minded extremist moron and don't try to censor content. And don't be so childish and naive as to think people on both ends of the political spectrum don't commit this sin.

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I don't remember that. But even the Supreme Court recognizes that there are reasons to censor some things, including obscenity. Just as there are extremists on every side of every issue, there are anti-censorship extremists whose views are just as simplistic as the people who want to ban everything that makes them uncomfortable.

For instance, while it's a good rule of thumb not to ban books, I think everybody can agree that there are certain books that really are inappropriate for an elementary school library. Or, I think we can agree that public libraries don't need to carry books advocating pedophilia or race war. But "appropriateness" requires something more than abstract principles like "never ban books" or "ban all books with explicit sexual material, or racially controversial material, or books written from an explicitly Christian perspective."

To strike a really moderate tone on censorship, I think we need to acknowledge that a democratic society is one where we depend on people being educated into the virtues. But that means you don't just teach any old book, or any old subject, or any old way of thinking about a particular subject. Probably the best tack is to present unavoidable authors or subjects in a context that allows for comparison with better ideas. But that also requires educators to take a certain point of view, and we've seen time and again that educators will generally take a the leftist point of view in either the less obvious way of designing curriculum at the lower levels or in taking over entire departments (or creating new ones with progressive politics tied into the subject) in universities. So, then, do you allow for more local control of education? And couldn't that actually lead to more censorship? Or would it just lead to different censorship than the more insidious form we have now (where liberal ideology hides behind a claim to being objective)?

I don't think there's any final answer to the question of censorship, because it ultimately ties back into questions about education. And those questions about education are fundamentally political in a democratic society.

Censorship: A rightie or a leftie problem?

Re: Censorship: A rightie or a leftie problem?

Re: Censorship: A rightie or a leftie problem?

Word.***

but yet you are OK with the "safe spaces"?

Re: but yet you are OK with the "safe spaces"?

Which government?

Re: Which government?

Great question. Scarecrow answered it best, imo.***

Who said censorship was something only lefties do?

You didn't see the thread below?

Re: You didn't see the thread below?

He said anything that had...

Re: He said anything that had...

I did miss that, my bad

The side I don't like is the one who does all the

Neither. It's a government problem.***

Yep both.**

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