You've replied to a post of mine that is no longer there. I wonder what the heck is going on here!!!


> Note: I quote here parts of a post by Shadowfax to which I intend to reply.


I've snipped out the religious stuff because you're correct- - -it should be in a separate post and preferably in a realtime discussion forum.


> >> Nor would I urge you to try and draw it. But for those communities that do draw the line, and draw it so as to proscribe what they find to be morally reprehensible, I have respect.
> >>
> > Would you have that same respect if you LIVED in one of those communities, and that community judged something you cherished to be morally reprehensible?
>
> That's a fair question, and one that I talked about with Jacqueline last night. It's true: it is very easy for me, someone who has grown up enjoying all the benefits of a free country, to talk about freedom as if it were no big deal. If I lived in, say, China, then no doubt my feelings about censorship would be colored by that experience.
>
> But I haven't lived in China, and I can only speak from the perspective I actually have, so here goes: *In principle*, if I were the oppressed party, I would have to agree with the oppressors that what I have to say is indeed a threat to their values. Shutting me up would seem like a sensible thing for them to do to preserve their way of life. And I wouldn't abide by the censoring laws, either; I'd have to employ civil disobedience, or even subversive and secret action.
>
> That is not to say that I would approve of that community's decision to censor me. I may need to reiterate this in every post in this thread: I am not championing censorship. The extent of what I would like to say on the subject is:
>
> A) Censorship is one approach (albeit a poor one) to addressing a social problem that non-censoring communities like ours generally seem to ignore. It points to the existence of the problem and spurs us to come up with our own, hopefully more mature, solution; and

well, I don't think we can say we ignore the problems. I think what we have to realize is that we're all running around trying to find THE SOlUTION to these problems, without acknowledging that there IS no solution. Censorship isn't the answer because it's wrong. Yet if we let people read the material you are against, they might grow desensitized to it. So you either oppress people or you corrupt them.


>
> B) Our attitude towards censorship reveals the intensity of our commitment to the ideal of freedom. Ideological intensity of that magnitude ought sometimes to be examined and evaluated, so that we can assure ourselves that we are not falling into some dangerous form of excess.

I don't think that we as americans can change that view. Our very COUNTRY was formed BECAUSE we were denied freedom. A country that formed itself in order to gain freedom is not going to take kindly to any attempts to take that freedom away.



> > Shad "How can what you say degrade my integrity? You can say or write any disgusting or immoral thing you want, and my integrity will not be violated" owfax
>
> If I write a disgusting and immoral thing, and you read it, will it have no influence over your conscience or character? I can't answer that for you, but for my part, I regret the way in which disgusting and immoral things, by my own choice to consume them, have degraded my own integrity.

no, it will not. According to your view, if I witness someone robbing a bank, MY moral character is compromised because I was exposed to someone else doing bad things. Every time I see some jerk in traffic flip someone off, I become more of a jerk merely because I witnessed it. Every time I read about a murder in the paper, I get closer myself to killing someone because I read about it. The argument is ludicrous, but it's a very historical one. Throughout history, groups have made the argument that they have to "protect" the masses from media which goes against THEIR beliefs. I would submit that they make this protection claim out of the fear of the idea that if people are exposed to alternative viewpoints, they might see how wrong the censoring group is, and decide to do something about it.

The bottom line is that people can and should be free to make their own decisions about what to read.

Let's take porn. Porn is always being censored. There are two types of people in the world. Those that want to look at porn, and those who do not. Those who don't want to look at porn aren't effected by the censorship at all. They'd make the decision not to view porn even if the censorship hadn't made it for them. The people that WANT to view porn are already, to use the words of the porn-censorers, "corrupted." They WANT to view porn. to WANT to see the porn means they're already corrupted. If they see the porn, it doesn't matter because they're already corrupted, so why bother censoring the porn from them?




>
> Iss