Rushdie & Rauch v. Storck: Censorship!
Salman Rushdie is one of the many opponents of censorship. Born to an Indian family in
Britian, his books contain magical realism, historical fiction, and Eastern-Western connections. His works are often controversial, and in 1989 Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for his death. Rushdie tells us that we are living in a censorious age where our voices are being censored in the name of “respect”. This need for “respect” extends beyond its traditional definition, and also means that one must not overtly disagree with what others say or think. Rushdie thinks this censorship will bring an end to the radical disagreements that shape a free society. ! ! Jonathan Rauch is an American journalist who is also an avid proponent of same-sex
marriage. He agrees with Rushdie that censorship should be fought because it is being used to censor simple disagreements; not only people are losing face over voicing negative views about blacks, but also for speaking against advantaged groups such as Christians and men. Rauch argues that censorship’s goal of purifying the world is a futile effort. People typically see the world in terms of in-groups and out-groups, so there will always be prejudice. This prejudice is hard to pin down because it may be confused with misinformation. For example, a protestor saying “God Hates Fags” may be expressing a subjective statement of fact. Therefore, the end goal of censorship is unobtainable. Rauch calls this promotion of anti-pluralism “purism”. Rauch’s “purists” even try to ban words themselves. However, offenders can always find new words to use, so this once again is a vain effort. Finally, Rauch argues that minorities in particular should oppose this new censorship. This is because minorities cannot make change by force, but only through speech. By encouraging censorship, minorities lose their greatest weapon.! ! Thomas Storck is an author who writes about society, ethics, and Scripture. He is a
major proponent of distributivism, which asserts that property is a fundamental right and it should be distributed as equally as possible. This author thinks that censorship has a place in modern society; he believes the government should block access to certain ideas. His central tenet is that evil ideas lead to evil thinking, and evil thinking leads to evil acts. According to Stork, some examples of “evil” are not hard to find, and he points to rape and woman beating.!
Storck refutes several arguments against censorship. The first of these arguments is that bad ideas do not necessarily influence behavior. He points out that liberals keep their children from reading books with gender stereotypes, and they would be uncomfortable with television run by neo-Nazis. The next argument is that, according to some critics, the State is a poor arbitrator of what to censor. Storck claims that because some things are inherently evil, these things should be apparent to the State. Also, since we entrust the state to jail or kill us if we break the law, entrusting the state to censor media is relatively benign. Finally, he refutes the idea that censorship will stop good debate. Because only bad ideas are being censored, the good arguments can still be heard. Storck also addresses class issues; he says that philosophy and moral relativism mainly concern the rich, and that the poor will suffer the sex and violence that will result if we do not censor.!
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Although these authors ostensibly have opposing viewpoints on censorship, I think they
end up talking past each other; they define censorship as different things. Rushdie and Rauch think offensive speech is something that simply disparages groups of people, whereas Storck thinks offensive speech is anything that could be dangerous or harmful. ! ! I think the Rushdie and Rauch paper is well-written for what it is; it backs up its
assertions with references to real cases such as the Rutgers president being asked to resign for his comments on blacks. However, it does not take a very ambitious stance; offensive speech is simply that which disagrees with someone. Thus, the paper is mainly critiquing modern “political correctness”, or as Rauch calls it “purism”. I think that if the authors didn’t want to tackle more legitimate reasons for censorship, such as ideas that actually harm people, they should’ve stressed that they are mainly arguing against political correctness. Rauch also asserts that prejudice is everywhere, but this seems to refute his central tenet. If three was less prejudice, there would be less need for censorship, so it seems to me that the inverse should be true.! ! Storck considers censorship of all ideas, and he says that there are some ideas that the
government should be able to censor. To show that censorship can be beneficial, Storck doesn’t have to show how to decide controversial cases, he just has to show that are a few ideas whose censoring would better the world. In Storck’s world, some things are just inherently evil, and he gives examples such as rape and women beating. He claims that by spreading these ideas through the media, other people can come to feel the same way. I did not find his hypothetical examples very instructive, but the examples do not have to be very good, because Storck is only trying to say that censorship can be beneficial in at least some cases. However, his
argument for censorship becomes difficult to support when he considers who will enforce it and how it will be regulated. Because he never defined what evil was, there are no enforceable standards for the government to be held to. The government is not entirely benevolent or free of corruption, so if you give it a free pass to eradicate “evil”, there are bound to be unintended consequences. I think his classism issue is misinformed as well. The poor can also be harmed by censorship; North Korea has the greatest censorship in the world, and it keeps the poor in their place and the rich in power by upholding the cult of personality.! ! I do not think the papers are contradictory. One can simultaneously hold the beliefs that
it is good to censor dangerous speech that presents a clear and present danger, but not speech just because it disagrees with someone’s sensibilities. In fact, there is still a gray area between these two extremes. Neither paper addresses censorship of things that may be dangerous but cannot be proved to be so, such as misogynist rap or violent video games.
