Personal rights and freedoms: censorship

Self-tutoring about rights we (may have, naively) thought we didn’t need to defend: the tutor mentions the rise of censorship.

When I was a kid I thought freedom of speech was a thing. It’s really not, of course, because people will usually punish someone for saying something they don’t want to hear, especially if it’s correct. The reach of some entities is surprising.

Even if practical freedom of expression doesn’t exist, does legal? Well, some censors are trying to attack the legal right to freedom of expression, too. Allegedly, one avenue of attack is directed at library system in the following way: If a minor can find “harmful” material in a library, the keeper of said library would be eligible for criminal charges. Such is my understanding of the situation, anyway.

The definition of “harmful” probably doesn’t take a lot of imagination, in this context.

Supposedly it’s conservatives that are behind the push to restrict access to reading materials. Restriction of expression is also perpetrated by people apparently from the other side of the spectrum, however: see judiciary.house.gov.

One might argue that a difference between the two attempts to restrict access to content is that the conservatives are trying to legislate what they argue is morality, while the federal government is trying to preserve the power and privilege of its executive. However, historians know that once censorship is adopted, it takes on a life of its own. Therefore, the true struggle should be against censorship itself.

A true conservative won’t be happy to hear about book restrictions, bans, etc. In fact, I’d say that librarians tend to be educated and freedom-defending. In a democracy, it’s a bad move for any political ideology to make an enemy of them.

Then again, I’ve heard that a university student who was handing out copies of the US constitution got arrested. Perhaps the United States is more like other countries than we like to believe.

Source:

msn.com

libertyjusticecenter.org