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To: AustinBill
These arguments for censorship are precisely the same as the left uses to argue that those preaching the Gospel in public are engaging in "hate speech" and thus need to be muzzled by force of law.

I argue with drug addicts a lot. They keep using the word "Freedom" (when discussing drug usage) and "Prohibition" (when discussing drug availability) to lend a false sense of respectability to their behavior. In the same manner, you cite the word "Censorship" in an effort to make vulgarity respectable, by tacitly implying that it is the moral equivalent of the suppression of political ideas. It is not, and it is just a tactic to assert that it is.

One man's piety is another man's obscenity. The left absolutely believes the Gospel to be obscene as do a large segment of the population. Allow an "obscenity exception" for censorship and whoever gets to define the terms will simply call whatever ideas and speech they dislike "obscene" and make it stick. Count on it.

The country has been around for a couple of hundred years. There has been seemingly little bad consequences from having banned vulgar and profane speech during that time. You now argue that we will be in grave danger if we don't continue doing what we have always done?

31 posted on 06/21/2012 3:03:34 PM PDT by DiogenesLamp (Partus Sequitur Patrem)
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To: DiogenesLamp
I'm looking forward, not back. The issue is not what 'worked' in the past but what is needed now and in the future. The principal that government should be in the business of regulating speech deemed "offensive" by some is dangerous to all liberty in the Internet age.

As I mentioned, traditional broadcast technology is irrelevant as it will be dead within another decade at most. Information is now inherently transnational and the traditional "publisher's monopoly" is broken. Thus all laws regulating speech are now targeting individual speech rather than corporate entities and efforts to engage in such regulation must be transnational in scope which of course fosters the growth in "one world government" which is precisely the opposite of the decentralized view of government envisioned by the Framers. That's why it makes sense to oppose all such efforts. Let traditional TV die by its own hand. It's doing a fine job of it on its own. Just hit the off button or unplug it altogether. It's easier to do than most realize.

38 posted on 06/21/2012 4:02:47 PM PDT by AustinBill (consequence is what makes our choices real)
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