| Jun. 8th, 2009 @ 10:13 am 56 days of the odd remain |
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I believe that the only acceptable kind of censorship is self-censorship. All externally applied censorship is misguided at best, evil at worst. On the misguided side of things, there is the following example: I used to watch wrestling (still do, occasionally). One of the odd quirks of the Canadian broadcast was that anytime one of the women would get struck by one of the men, we wouldn't get to see it - there would be an abrupt cut to views of the crowd. So - it was okay for guys to beat on guys. It was okay for girls to beat on girls. It was even okay for girls to beat on guys. But God forbid that we should see a guy hitting a girl (hearing it was fine, of course :p).
Now, I'm sure the people orchestrating the censorship had good intentions, but if you actually think about what message that particular pattern sends, they are failing miserably.
What I'm not saying is that people should be allowed to run around saying whatever they want without consequences. I'm a firm believer that one should accept that freedom of any kind does not come without cost. So, if some guy wants to run around spouting Holocaust denials, he'll get no sympathy from me when a more enlightened soul pops him in the nose.
So, the final analysis: censorship bad, personal responsibility good.
And now you know... |