The Delicate Art Of Censorship & The Dangers It Brings To A Society Built On Freedoms
April 22nd 2009 10:46
“The fact is that censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion.”
~Henry Steele Commager
~Henry Steele Commager
For a society that prides itself on the basic freedoms of expression, speech, assembly, press, religion and the right to bear arms, we have a funny way of showing our appreciation for these rights by trying to censor ourselves.
The conflict of granting complete freedom to one and all and finding a point of balance in a functional society has always been a hallmark of political argument since the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The needs of society to cultivate a cohesive environment where, all men and women are able to access these freedoms and needs of men as a society, pushing everything to the limit is a fundamental and complex discussion that can’t be rationalized in an essay of any length.
It’s easy to define the clear line of moral decency when it comes to subjects like bestiality and child pornography, but a much different argument when it comes to discussions of regulation of the pornography industry and the definition that goes into the exploitation of women.
One person’s definition of exploitation is another’s sense of escape and freedom outside of social norms and societal roles. One can’t argue the environment that has been created from the extremes of the sex industry such as the underground world of sex slavery that has turned into a multi-national billion dollar industry or when the twisted minds of those individuals in society bring their perversions to the common citizen.
The answer to cure social ills isn’t with the wagging of the finger in terms of degradation of lifestyle’s, but is to rather come together and fight against the things that are obviously wrong to the average rational thinking human being.
Violence and sex have been a part of our society from the beginning of time and shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone when a free thinking society incorporates it into a culture built on music and modern forms of expression.
The attacks on the music industry for things as simple as recorded words did nothing but build an industry into the empire we see today. The reality of this government-assisted effort to garner votes from the church is within the fact that it was a political war gone wrong.
Musical groups the likes of Public Enemy, Two Live Crew, Motley Crue, Guns & Roses and NWA garnered legendary status as a culture divide between the youth and those who maintained the power to say what was right and wrong for society.
The Freedom of Expression clauses in the Constitution clearly protected these artists from government interference in the expression towards what was happening in their environment.
In typical American fashion, it wasn’t enough to just say that the average American had the right to protect their children from this expression, but rather it was smeared into a pasted war to ban all obscenity that continues today.
The problem with the issue of censorship isn’t within the factors of trying to protect elements of society from another, but simply comes down to politicians picking their battles to gain political points.
This bi-partisan war to win the hearts and souls of “decent” America should have never been a war in the first place. The sooner we can accept the actions of others who aren’t interfering with other segment’s basic rights or breaking laws, the sooner we can set up clear lines between what is blatantly right and what is blatantly wrong.
The sex slave trade that happens in American homes of suburbia on a daily basis is blatantly wrong on anyone’s moral compass along with all aspects of child pornography, bestiality and animal abuse.
These are the aspects of censorship we need to focus on rather than compounding issues like the Fairness Doctrine and trying to slant media bias to one side or the other.
While I firmly disagree with the direction our media has taken when transformed into corporate empires and left to their own devises…
This is not reason enough to subvert the articles of the Constitution.
The media is a product of Capitalism, meaning that the ultimate power of how they cover the news is in the hands of the people who control their revenue streams and it is also the people who have the absolute right to stand up and say enough is enough when the BS piles too high.
The time has come for Americans to open their eyes to the reindeer games of politics and choose their sides to fundamental arguments carefully. Chasing after strip clubs and pornography companies will not get us any closer to having a safe society for our children to grow up in.
Focusing our battles squarely on issues of rooting out people who take advantage of our system of freedoms by taking away the rights of others through aggression and strife is the real problem in America.
When issues like censorship are brought up in conversation, we spend so much time yelling and screaming one way or the other we forget what brought up the conversation in the first place.
Now is the time for us to remember that we have deep and far reaching problems that go well beyond Fluffy London spinning on a pole or what Leon is doing on a Friday night.
The problem is squarely within the factors of how we approach the argument and allowing ourselves to blind each other while danger is hanging out at our backdoor…
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