Censorship: Freedom Or Suppression ? Essay, Research Paper

Censorship: Freedom or Suppression ?

Government censorship can be looked at as a blessing or an unneeded burden.

I personally feel that all censorship is completely unnecessary and should be

found unconstitutional. It is the countless moral views that bring no right

answer for what should and should not be censored. I know that the governments

version of censorship varies greatly from mine, just as mine does from a world

wide view.

The citizens of the United States are living in a pure democracy that

has given us all first amendment rights. This alone should mean that their

should be no government intervention on a code of ethics or morality. This

should mean that we as citizens should be allowed complete freedom of our own

choices. Our government was set up to make laws and to keep our society in order.

They were doing a fine job until they started making decisions for us on what is

or isn’t decent. The most recent example of this is the Communication Decency

Act of 1996(Located in the Telecommunications Act Of 1996). This act more or

less states that the Internet should be censored and be given restrictions. The

first issue this brings up is who owns the Internet. No one really owns it

because it is really thousands of computer networked together. The main backbone

of the Internet was originally made up of government funded universities and

other government institutions. However that is no longer the case. Now the

majority of the Internet is run and operated by independent services and

everyday citizens. The Internet is a modern day symbol of the freedom of speech

we have in our society. The government has no right to tell us what we can and

can not do in our homes. No one is forcing anyone to go to any specific area of

the Internet for anything. These are all choices made with our own free will. I

feel that the government is clearly violating the fine line between church and

state. The Job of the church is to keep up moral and ethical standards in our

world. Obviously the government got the wrong job description for clearly they

are violating the trust they have in the Church doing its job.

I know that if they put me in charge of censorship things would be a lot

different from how they are today. The first step I would make would be

censoring all Ex-lax and Imodium D commercials. I find it extremely peculiar

that these commercials always seem to appear right during dinner. Not only do I

find these commercials offensive, but I am also repulsed by the poor time slots

the commercials are characteristically shown in. The next action I would take

would be censoring WWF wrestling. I find the men in their partially clad

outfits to be extremely disturbing. The sport also does nothing more than

promoting violence. Both verbally and physically. The last thing I would remove

would be the infomercials on TV that not only take away from the precious

moments of our lives, but they also take an extremely repetitive approach which

degrades the sense of the viewers intelligence. This I find to be most offensive.

You may not see eye to eye with some of my viewpoints, but that is where

censorship is clearly impractical. Everyone has different moral and ethical

viewpoints on whats right and wrong. Who is to say what we can and can’t see and

hear? Obviously we know the answer of that question to be the government, but

who is to say that they are right, and that they are actually helping us become

better humans?

Different cultures fail to share the views we have with the entire

censorship issue. The best example of this is the Internet. If we were to censor

the Internet, a lot of the material could not be taken down due to the

acceptance of the material in the foreign country the site is located in.

Obviously other countries see no need for censorship. The issues that we find

offensive are openly dealt with in other countries. One can only assume that our

government is therefore taking away more of the freedom that we as citizens

living in a free democratic country deserve to have.

As you can see, along with our freedom comes the need for us to know

what is wrong and what is right. If the government would allow all the material

it finds indecent, there would be less of a problem with the material. People

eventually get used to things, and they loose their shock value and soon these

things are no longer perceived as wrong. If the government would drop their

entire censorship kick, I have full confidence that people can censor for

themselves what they perceive to be right and wrong.