February 9, 2006

• CENSORSHIP

  Among some of the Featured_Grownups,
  there is currently a discussion of censorship.  I have not yet
  read anyone else’s entries.  This is not because I am not
  interested in their views.  It is primarily because I might be
  induced to enter into an argument or influenced to try not to repeat what others have said already, so I
  want to get my ideas down here before I am exposed to anyone else’s.

  Don’t let that mislead you.  For the most part, my ideas on
  censorship are other people’s ideas.  I can barely speak on the
  topic without quoting someone.  Here are a few of my favorite quotes on, around and about censorship:

  “Freedom begins when you
  tell Mrs. Grundy to go fly a kite.”  [Mrs. Grundy defined]
   
  “Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.” [If you don't get the connection between secrecy and censorship, think about it.]

  “Limiting the freedom of news ‘just a little bit’ is in the same category with the classic example ‘a little bit pregnant’.”

  “The whole principle is wrong; it’s like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can’t eat steak.”

  Those four are all from one writer:  Robert Anson Heinlein.

  “REVOLUTION, n. A bursting of the boilers which usually takes place when the safety valve of public discussion is closed.”

  – Ambrose Bierce, The Enlarged Devil’s Dictionary (1906)

  “Fear of serious injury cannot alone
  justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and
  burned women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage
  of irrational fears.”

  – U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

  “The press is easier to strangle than to look in the eyes.”

  – Winston Churchill

  “Restriction on free thought and free
  speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one
  un-American act that could most easily defeat us.”

  –U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

  “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.”

  and…

  “I am opposed to any form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

  – Thomas Jefferson

  “Censorship of anything, at any time, in
  any place, on whatever pretense, has always been and always will be the
  last resort of the boob and the bigot.”

  – Eugene Gladstone O’Neill, American playwright

  There are some differences between me
  and some of the writers quoted above.  Unlike Brandeis, that other
  Douglas (with one ess), Churchill and Jefferson, I am not a dead white
  man, and I have nowhere near the socio-political clout they had during
  their lifetimes.   But, like Eugene O’Neill and Robert A.
  Heinlein, my work has offended Mrs. Grundy and she has on certain
  occasions done what she could to muzzle me.  I was denied a place
  and a voice in some venues.  I responded to that by finding other
  venues where I could express myself fully.

  I cannot perceive any benefit to society or the planet from any form of
  censorship.  As much as I deplore much of the nonsense and
  self-serving bullshit I see and hear, I would not advocate shutting
  anyone up. 

  I think that parents who lie to their children or seek to shield them
  from the truth are misguided and are ultimately committing a subtle but
  destructive form of child abuse.  I would not, however, seek to
  stop them.  They get what they deserve when the kids grow up and
  learn the truth.  What I do object to, however, is any attempt a
  parent might make to abridge the right of another person to tell the
  truth within the hearing of those children the lying parent is trying
  to “shield.”

  An amusing instance of this occurred during this Christmas season just
  past.  On public radio, someone being interviewed had said, in
  connection with some recent egregious example of government bullshit,
  “If you believe that, you probably believe in Santa Claus.”  An
  irate listener complained to NPR, saying that he resented the fact that
  his young child heard it and began questioning him about Santa. 
  The news reader who reported that bit of listener feedback tried and
  failed to completely suppress the amusement in his voice.

  I am sure that some people find my frequent references to the Santa
  Claus lie to be tiresome.  Tough shit, I say.  A lie is
  a lie, even when it is “merely” a polite hypocrisy or a “little”
  “white” lie.  I have no objection to someone who truly believes in
  Santa Claus expressing those beliefs.  My objection is to the
  wanton and willful propagation of falsehood.  Lies debase and
  degrade the liars as much as they deceive those being lied to. 
  Lies lead to secrecy and censorship in the interest
  of covering the lies.

  I am wholeheartedly in favor of the truth,
  the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  The “truth” I’m
  alluding to here is a personal thing.  I don’t mean that some
  deluded soul should be hushed because some supposedly wiser or better
  informed being judges his words to be false.  Truth is not always
  factual, not always “real” except in the mind of the one telling his
  own truth, but unless it is allowed to be told there is no chance for
  anyone to do any fact-checking or give any constructive feedback. 
  Even the “wise” and well-educated ones can be blind-sided by a radical
  new idea.   Can we afford to silence anyone just because his
  ideas are deemed false or dangerous by someone else?  I think not.

  
  Image by Frank Miller for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund

  

  • 9:27 pm
  • 32 Comments