Censorship In America
Censorship in America
Welcome to America. The land of the free and the home of those all too willing to use that right to its fullest extent. The first nation truly founded on the right to speak one’s mind without consequence, America is now the most prosperous nation in the world, largely due to that very fact. We as Americans are blessed to live in a nation that is thriving both politically and socially, both as innovator and steady power, both as a community and as a collection of individuals. The marks of American society have spread far beyond the nation’s borders, with everything from the Big Mac to Steven Spielberg movies to democracy itself making it’s impact felt on this modern world. The name America has become synonymous with freedom, and through this freedom, great wealth, power, and success. And yet history has shown, through the example of democracies like Athens and Rome, that even the greatest of civilizations eventually swerve off course.
After reading Patrick Garry’s “An American Paradox: Censorship in a Nation of Free Speech”, Marjorie Heins’ “Not In Front Of The Children”, and various statements from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), I have come to believe that the unstoppable juggernaut that is America may too be in danger of losing its way. The principles of freedom and human rights that this country was founded and subsequently prospered on are often quickly abandoned in the effort to protect the general public from anything deemed even slightly dangerous. This never-ending barrage on freedom that is censorship makes its presence felt constantly, through daily protests of the latest four-letter-word-spewing rap CD, through news reports of the next teen-to-adult oriented video game to be taken off the shelves, or even through critical attacks on supposedly “offensive” movies like Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ. Yet not only does censorship fail in eliminating the problems of society...
View Full Essay