> Allow me to dissent.

No. It's morally reprehensible, and there is no reason why anyone should read it. My point is that ANYTHING that is written is going to offend SOMEONE. Thoroughout history, book (er. . scroll, etc, depending on the technology of the times) has retarded human intellectual growth, often for hundreds of years. A classic example would be the persecution of any scientist who postulated anything that didn't geehaw with the bible. (the earth is round, the earth is not the center of the universe, evolution, etc). The whole point behind the concept of freedom of speech is that ideas can be shared, even if they offend someone.

I'm quite sympathetic to the practice of book banning, for reasons which I'll try to make understandable.
>
> Let me arbitrarily choose a book as an example, one which I haven't read but whose contents I know about by way of reviews: _American_Psycho_. In this book, women are raped and brutalized in some of the most horrific ways imaginable and in vivid terms. It strains credulity to suppose that these scenes are in the book for any reason other than to titillate the reader's imagination.

one can make the same argument about romance novels. Should we ban them too? What about sci fi books? They titillate the imagination, albeit not always in a sexual way.

Without going so far as to expect any reader to actually enjoy the portrayal of sadism for its own sake, the author nevertheless exploits the worst part of the soul, the part whose interest is piqued by shock and scandal.
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> I don't have many qualms about asserting that society has benefited neither corporately nor individually from the availability of _American_Psycho_ to its members, young and old. I would go still further and say that it would be a good thing if many such books, which have no redeeming value and instead tend to erode the conscience and integrity of their readers, were no longer available to read. If many of you do not agree with me in the particular instance of _American_Psycho_, I would still expect that most of you can think of at least one book about which you have little trouble thinking, "This book is reprehensible enough that no sufficient moral or ethical reason can be found why anyone should read it."

I can think of many such books. However, books generally have a synopsis on the back or inside cover. Reading that generally tells you if it's something you want to read. Are you saying people are too stupid to decide what they want to read, so some entity (you, perhaps) has to step in and decide for them?



And if that is so, then the question arises: why do we permit the dissemination of expression that is recognized to be morally harmful?

Because morally harmful is defined differently by everybody. American society finds it immoral to have sex with strangers on the city bus. There are some cultures that find such an act completely natural. An old woman recently attacked a friend of mine from karate. She reached out and tried to yank his earring off because she found it morally reprehensible for men to wear earrings.

Charlie and the Chocolate factory was banned because some people found it morally reprehensible to get rid of Augustus Gloop because they felt that was picking on fat people. I don't find anything about that book morally reprehensible. In fact, I'd wager that the majority of Americans can't find anything morally reprehensible about that book, yet a small body of lunatics were able to ban it anyway.


>
> The usual answer is that Americans voluntarily sacrifice a measure of order and social control for the sake of freedom, which we hold to be the higher good. To have an open society like ours, we say, you just have to take the stuff you don't like along with the stuff you like, or risk losing both. It is a short step from banning a book to forbidding, let us say, a missionary from proselytizing indigenous people, as happens today in many countries less free than ours. We seek to restrain any one ideological group from gaining the upper hand because we do not trust ourselves, corporately, to define rightly what a person must or must not believe and say.
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> Now, the BIG question: does upholding the ideal of free expression render a community unable to also act in the defense of its commonly-recognized moral standards?

Not at all. And it is morally wrong for one person or group to make decisions that forbids access to any material that person or group finds morally wrong. Let's say we follow through with your ideal and create a federal entity to review material and ban that which they find immoral. We need to have a good representation here so we get someone to represent any offense. One guy is easilly offended by sex, another by swearing, another by anything that contradicts the bible, etc. We give them governing authority to ban any media they want. They now have to decide how to go about doing this. They can do this in one of two ways: They all take something, review it, then vote on whether it gets banned, or they all read stuff, and if anyone on the board decides it's offensive it gets banned. If they do it the first way, nothing will ever get banned. If they do it the second way, EVERYTHING will get banned. Why? Because to create a board that has every possible thing someone could get offended by represented by one individual board member, the board would have to be composed of every citizen of the country, since anything written is bound to offend someone.



Is it possible to set foot on the slope of controlling media without sliding inexorably down into fascism? If it is possible to act to preserve *both* free expression *and* common values, where must the line between them be drawn?

No, the two are mutually exclusive. We either A) give free expression or B) restrict free expression via censorship. You cannot have both.



>
> I don't have answers to these questions. I have respect for communities and nations that draw the line so as to restrict freedom more than morality, even though in many instances I would find my *own* speech and beliefs to be the ones proscribed. Some communities will invariably make poor judgements as to what poses a moral threat; I still sympathize with their intentions and perspective. I do not champion book banning, but neither am I persuaded that "it is definitely wrong to bar people from the ability to think about opposing ideas." Would that humans had never considered the very first "opposing idea": "You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of the tree your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."




As I mentioned above, if people had been allowed to learn about opposing viewpoints, we would be a lot more developed than we are now. That in and of itself is argument enough to avoid censorship.