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posted by martyb on Tuesday October 02 2018, @09:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-Disapprove-of-What-You-Say,-But-I-Will-Defend-to-the-Death-Your-Right-to-Say-It dept.

From an editorial in the Otago Daily Times out of New Zealand, Censorship a Trojan Horse:

It's an oft-cited maxim that the news media is the "fourth estate" upon which a healthy democracy stands.

It ensures the three traditional powers of state — the legislature, executive and judiciary — can be critiqued, challenged and curbed from quietly drifting into the arms of corruption and authoritarianism.

A free, fair, open and uncensored media is an antidote to state power and, for all its failings (and there are many), should be treasured as such. There are many countries around the world whose people would give anything for such a freedom.

Yet calls for the banning of certain opinion pieces, cartoons and commentary have risen in recent months, especially from those using social media, a world where such talk is becoming a trend. It is a trend we must confront.

Censorship is to suppress the harmful, the unacceptable, the obscene and the threatening from the media and other forms of public communication. Like a virus attacking democracy from the inside out, it was traditionally the tool of the dictator, though it is one used by many in power.

[...] It pays to query what those demanding censorship — be they celebrities, social-media activists or anybody else — see their ultimate goal as being.

To reduce hurt? To make the world a better place? Possibly, and those motivations are laudable. But the method employed to achieve them is not.

While censorship may be meant as a figurative horse upon which a better future rides, inside the belly of that horse lurks an army of conformity, quite capable of unwitting oppression.

History shows what happens when the fourth estate is no longer free to table all opinions.

It is a bleak picture. Without the disinfectant of exposure, power and ideals tend to corrupt even the most seemingly incorruptible.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:25PM (1 child)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:25PM (#742756)

    Well... there's a big practical difference in behavior between

    Specifically, the Espionage Act of 1917 states that if anyone allows any enemies to enter or fly over the United States and obtain information from a place connected with the national defense, they will be punished.

    vs

    kids skipping out of school chanting "hell no we won't go" and then going anyway when their draft number comes up.

    Or to paraphrase Holmes

    the question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.

    or more succinctly, before the USA became the global superpower, the constitution was not required to be a suicide pact.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @01:30AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @01:30AM (#743179)

    The 1917 ruling held that "defendants who distributed fliers to draft-age men, urging resistance to induction, could be convicted of an attempt to obstruct the draft, a criminal offense." [wikipedia.org] (quoted from Wikipedia, not from the ruling). What does that have to do with the Espionage Act section you quoted?