I’m sorry, you can’t read that
“A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood of ideas in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.”
-John F. Kennedy
Makes sense, doesn’t it? If a government is so worried about what information may “do” to its people that it feels it necessary to remove and edit as it sees fit, what does that really say about that government? If a government cannot trust its people, then should its people really trust it?
What place does censorship have in the world today? What place did it have in the past? What place will it have in the future. Today, it’s here; in the past, it was always there; in the future, it will probably continue to lurk in the shadows, popping up at random to squelch “dangerous” ideas. But what place does it rightfully have in any society at any time? I say none.
Censorship is the product of paranoid moralist knee-jerk freaks. It’s probably been with us essentially since the first time one group of people sought to forcibly control another group of people. The earliest good example of this that I’m aware of took place around 399 BC, when Socrates chose death over censoring his philosophy. Since then (and I’m sure for a long time before that) innumerable other incidences of censorship have unfolded in various societies, ranging from mild to unspeakably heinous. Here’s a somewhat US-centered chronology (instances quoted from a timeline in Mary E. Hull’s Censorship in America, this will be long):
If you don’t feel like reading this, skip down to the next bold type
212 BC The ancient Chinese emperor Shih Huang-ti burns all the books he can find in his empire in an attempt to make history start over with him at the beginning.
AD 66 Lysistrata, by the Greek playwright Aristophanes, is banned by ancient Rome because it projects an anti-war stance.
1497 The ascetic leader Savonarola holds a bonfire, known as “the bonfire of vanities,” in Florence, Italy, to destroy all “indecent” books and works of art.
1525 Earliest report of book burning occurs in England; William Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament is destroyed.
1564 The Catholic Church issues the Index librorum prohibitorum (Index of Forbidden Books) declaring which books may not be read or printed by Catholics.
1644 John Milton submits “Areopagitica,” an argument against censorship, to Parliament. In the work Milton says, “Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience, above all other liberties.” Parliament condemns the work.
1664-1669 Moliere’s comedy Tartuffe, about religious hypocrisy, is banned from public stages in France.
1712 The first Stamp Act, or tax on paper, is passed in England with the hope of eliminating the growing number of radical newspapers and tracts being disseminated among the populace.
1764-1768 British thinker John Wilkes is tried for treason and sedition after criticizing King George III in a work called North Briton; Wilkes is jailed, but he becomes a celebrated figure in both Britain and the American colonies for having had the courage to express his views.
1791 The First Amendment, which protects the freedoms of religion, speech, and the press as well as the rights to assembly and petition, is approved and made a permanent part of the U.S. Constitution.
1798 Congress adopts the Sedition act, which outlaws “false, scandalous, and malicious” statements agains the U.S. Government. The act, which is the first national attempt at political censorship, is allowed to expire during Thomas Jefferson’s administration.
1807 Thomas Bowdler publishes The Family Shakespeare, a sanitized version of the original [Shakespeare] plays, giving rise to the term “bowdlerization,” meaning “to expurgate vulgar parts.”
1853 [I love this one] The armless classical statue known as the Venus de Milo is tried, convicted, and condemned for nudity in Mannheim, Germany.
1868 The fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which strengthens the protections offered by the First Amendment by guaranteeing that no state can make a law abridging the rights of citizens of the United States, is ratified.
1873 The “Comstock Law,” or Federal Anti-Obscenity Act – inspired by censorship advocate Anthony Comstock – bans the sale of items “for the prevention of contraception” in the United States. The law also bans works of literature such as Aristophyane’s Lysistrata, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Boccaccio’s Decameron, Defoe’s Moll Flanders, and certain editions of The Arabian Nights from traveling via U.S. mail.
1914 Margaret Sanger, leader of the birth-control movement, is indicted for sending articles on contrasception (deemed “obscene literature”) through the U.S. mail; Sanger is forced to flee the country.
1918 The Sedition and Espionage Acts, passed during Woodrow Wilson’s administration, make it illegal for Americans to use “disloyal” or “abusive” language against the United States government, the American flag, U.S. military uniforms, or the Constitution.
1920s Attorney General Mitchell Palmer conducts raids on the meeting places of trade unionists, immigrant groups, and radical political organizations in 33 U.S. cities; over 4,000 people are put in jail and denied counsel. Hundreds of immigrants are deported for so-called “un-American” activities.
1925 The John T. Scopes trial [please tell me you remember this from history class]
1933 A U.S. Customs official impounds an art history book on the Sistine Chapel because it contains nude pictures
1941-1945 Military censors during World War II purge reporters’ accounts of shell shock and battle fatigue among the soldiers so this news will not reach the homefront.
1948 The Catholic Church issues its last Index of Forbidden Books; the index lists over 5,000 titles.
1950s Senator Joseph McCarth, chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations, launches a crusade against communism in the United States government; books suspected of containing communist propaganda are burned in U.S. information libraries abroad, and many of these libraries are closed.
1957 Producers of the Ed Sullivan Show instruct the camera crew to film singer Elvis Presley from the waist up so his gyrating pelvis will not be broadcast.
1963 Comedian Lenny Bruce is tried for obscenity and for mocking religion in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Beverly Hills; in 1964, Bruce is deported from the United Kingdom on similar charges.
1965 In Griswold vs Connecticut, the Supreme Court invalidates an old state law that prohibited the use or dissemination of birth control.
1966 Believing the music of the Beatles was corrupting youth, some Christian groups in the United States burn Beatles records and try to prevent their music from being played on the radio.
1967 In Epperson v. Arkansas, the Supreme Court rules that a 1928 anti-evolution statute still on the books in Arkansas violates the freedom of speech guaranteed under the First Amendment.
The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) establishes a ratings board to classify films as either G, M, R, or X.
1971 Excerpts for the Pentagon Papers, controversial classified documents dealing with U.S. policy in Vietnam, are published by the New York Times, touching off a debate on national security versus the right of the people to know.
1973 Parents in Kanawha County, West Virginia, protest the school board’s selection of high school literature textbooks and readings because they include the writings of Gwendolyn Brooks, Allen Ginsburg, Malcolm X, and Eldridge Cleaver; parents remove their children from school for up to nine weeks and march on the state capital.
1979 Schools in Midland, Michigan, remove William Shakespeares’s play The Merchant of Venice from classrooms because of concerns that the Jewish character Shylock, portrayed as a shrewd and heartless money lender, promotes Jewish stereotyping.
1980 U.S. District Judge William R. Overton rules that an Arkansas statute to teach scientific creationism in public schools is unconstitutional because creationism is a religion, not a science, and therefore cannot be mandated by state law.
1981 In Board of Education v Pico the Supreme Court rules that students in an Island Trees, New York, school district have the right to read the books Slaughterhouse Five, Black Boy, Soul on Ice, and A Hero Anin’t Nothing But a Sandwich, which the school board had removed from their classrooms because they were considered “anti-American.”
1982 The Ethiopian famine makes headlines throughout the world but goes unreported within Ethiopia for two years due to censorship of the press.
1983 Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House is rejected by four members of the Alabama State Textbook Committee because it expounds feminist views.
1985 The Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC) is founded; Frank Zappa and other musicians attend hearings before the U.S. Senate on pornography in rock lyrics.
1988 The University of Michigan becomes one of he first higher education institutions in the country to adopt a speech code that punishes racist and sexist expression.
1989 Two California school districts remove Little Red Riding Hood from their libraries after parents objected to the mention of alcohol in the tale, in which Little Red Riding Hood brings her grandmother a basket of food and wine.
Salman Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses is published. Statements within it offend Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini; he calls for Rushdie’s execution, forcing the British author into hiding.
U.S. Senator Jesse Helms attacks the National Endowment for the Arts for its funding of obscene art.
1990 The Parents Music Resource Center convinces major record companies to affix parental advisory warning stickers on albums containing explicit lyrics.
1992 Rap artist Ice T’s song “Cop Killer” is removed from his Body Count album after his sponsor, Time Warner, is pressured to drop the song by police associations.
1994 Congress holds hearings on the issue of violent, misogynist, and sexually explicit music lyrics.
1996 Congress adopts the Communication Decency Act (CDA), which criminalizes the use of pornography or any “indecent” material on any computer network unless steps are taken to restrict anyone under the age of eighteen from having access to that information.
Congress passes the Child Pornography Prevention Act, which expands the existing definition of child pornography to include computer-generated images.
1997 On June 26, The Connunications Decency Act is declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court, which strikes down the censorship provisions of the act in Reno v ACLU. Justice John Paul Stevens writes, “the interest in encouragin freedom of expression in a democratic society outweighs any theoretical but unproven benefit of censorship.”
In August, antipornography activists begin a national campaign to pressure booksellers not to sell photography books containing pictures of nude children. Among the activisits are Randall Terry, former leader of the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, and members of Focus on the Family.
1998 An Alabama grand jury charges the book chain Barns and Noble with selling obscene material for stocking books by photographers Jock Sturges and David Hamilton, whose photographic collections contain nude pictures of children.
OK, YOU CAN STOP SCROLLING NOW! Yeah, so that got way long – I gues there was more there that I wanted to use than I thought when I started. Sorry about that. That’s only some of what’s printed in the book I have in front of me now, and what’s printed in the book is but a tiny fraction of censorship, obscenity, etc in the U.S. Furthermore, the U.S. is downright innocent compared to other societies in world history.
So why do so many people feel that it is not only a good idea to have censorship, but downright critical for a healthy society? Almost all of the pro-censorship individuals I have ever met, read about, or been forced to listen to seem to draw their justification from a fairly small number of (what I would call fallible) reasonings. For starters, there’s the idea that information and ideas are capable of being “dangerous,” that someone getting ahold of the wrong information is sure to corrupt our youth, demoralize our society, and so on and so forth. Essentially, dissenting views are evil. Nuts to that, I say. I think it is far more dangerous to keep information from people than to let them be exposed to everything and react as they will. Ignorance is the root of all evil. Information is the antidote to ignorance. Keep information and ideas away from society and you only point it more directly towards its demise.
Others feel it is simply the moral duty of the country to try to limit “obscene” materials. This sounds innocent enough, doesn’t it? Keep porn and images of violence out of the hands of children, etc. What could be wrong with that? Well, a lot. The trouble is that it’s never so innocent as that. You’ve got to set a standard at some point, and setting that standard means imposing the moral views of a limited few onto the masses who may or may not agree one way or the other. It’s also really difficult to argue against this standpoint. Who wants to oppose someone arguing in favor of moral integrity? If he’s arguing against obscenity, that means you must be arguing for obscenity, doesn’t it? Well, that’s how it’s easy to portray it, though that’s not how it necessarily is. When I’m arguing against forced moralism and a forced definition and prohibition of that which is obscene, I’m arguing not in favor of obscenity but in favor of the freedom of the individual to peak for himself on what he or she considers to be obscene and/or acceptable. I believe it is in the interest of humanity in general (and particularly of the notion of freedom of speech) that we do not let others decide for us what is and is not acceptable.
I really just want to say to the government and all the people going pro-censorship, “what are you so afraid of?” If you’re afraid that pornography and dissenting views on society, religion, etc are going to undermine what you want your children to believe, what does that say about your faith in the strength of your own beliefs and reasonings? If you think the only way to keep “bad” ideas from unsettling society is to remove them from view, what does that say about your faith in the society itself and in the “good” ideas you would promote? If the good you promote is really so good, then why do you have to worry about it being undermined by the bad?
At the essential level of all of this, I truly and wholly believe that censorship is dangerous. That’s right, dangerous. Keeping information from people, whatever the motivation, is underhanded and deceptive. To sound like a hacker for a moment, information was meant to be free. Along those same lines, ideas were meant to be free. Any form of censorship is a direct violation, I believe, of the constitutional right of free speech. Amazing how much it gets trampled on, too, considering how much we seem to pride ourselves on that and other theoretically inalienable rights. The moment we let other start deciding for us what is good and bad and what is obscene and what is not and what is legal and what is not, we have forfeited our rights in whole. Once you let others set the standards by which and capacities in which you live your life, you have essentially become enslaved to them. You live your life on their terms, they have power over you.
Should others be in a position to decide these things for you? Absolutely not. It is your constitutional right to read and say exactly as you please, express yourself as you please, etc. Censorship and obscenity laws directly impinge upon those rights and should, nay, MUST be removed. Let the people decide for themselves. I’ll start trusting the government when the government starts trusting me.
