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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.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:09PM (3 children)
Let me put it fewer words than in your incoherent babble: you're a delusional idiot, mon cher.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:57PM
Finally someone else pointing out the obvious.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @06:40PM (1 child)
Seemed pretty coherent to me.
Didn't agree with every word, but it was coherent. And not obviously delusional.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 03 2018, @11:35AM
What original AC meant was AC admits in public I'm completely correct and there's no facts or the sophistry to brawl in opposition.
Original AC presented a somewhat less eloquent equivalent of the concession speech one side makes at the end of an election.
I won't rip on original AC for that, sometimes I get things perfectly correct and you can't expect the opposition to be very happy about that, but I can respect them for admitting it.
So... dogs and cats living together, the sky is falling, at one moment the right and left actually agree on some shared factual observations so where do we go from there to an optimistically better situation? My guess is nothing changes, but its still useful to ... see the situation more clearly.