Sometimes I feel like many people haven't thought much about their ideals but just adopt them because "they sound good." In their true nature, they probably are good but oftentimes they are twisted or not properly taught and so people use them in ways that actually act against them. Here, I will give a list about some of these Ideals and discuss them.
Censorship: What this means is the ability to effectively control what someone else will see. People tend to think of this as a violation of Free Speech, which it certainly can. On the other hand, if you don't allow for any censorship, then you forfeit any right for arguing against anyone using profanity or hate speech. The ideal of proper censorship is that it encourages good things, especially for children as they are in their formative years, while also limiting offensive or distracting material. Hence, censorship is not evil in itself but can be used for evil.
Consider this analogy for censorship. Your child is a plant in your garden. As it is your garden, you have the full right and duty to determine how it is raised. You can ask for assistance and pay a gardener or you can let anyone do whatever. If you leave the plant unattended and free for anyone to dump whatever they think is good, you will undoubtedly get something toxic that will kill the plant, undoing all the good stuff people and you put in to help raise it. A plant requires a lot of good water an nutrition, but it only takes some bad water to kill it. Another thing about censorship is that it can take bad water and filter out all of the bad stuff so the plant only receives what is good.
Free Speech: This comes under fire a lot due to hate speech, profanity, and art. Something to consider is the thought behind Free Speech or rather Freedom of the Press. First off, not everyone has a right to know everything otherwise we would have to give away our Intellectual Properties, Defense secrets, as well as social security and privacy information to our enemies and the world. The idea for Freedom of Press is that the government cannot force the press to publish lies. So when the media does publish lies on their own, especially with rumors, that is a violation of the nature of that freedom. I would argue further that the construing of words from people to incite rage where there shouldn't be is also a violation (such as done with headlines concerning Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' recent dissent).
Speaking of the dissent, that is the proper ideal of Free Speech. Free Speech is meant for people to speak their mind freely to bring up their concerns and ideas for action. All efforts to suppress such expression (such as by labeling it "hate" when it isn't, or construing a headline to make it appear negative) is an evil practice of censorship. This is because the true motivation is not really the care of the people, but that the people agree with you, even though you may be wrong. Free Speech is to allow other people to express their ideas in an environment so that people may reason if they are good or not. People have a right to express their concerns as that is how we learn what is important to them and how even if our goal is good, the method toward getting there is evil.
Summary: Proper practice of Censorship and Free Speech are compatible, but only if you live up to the ideals of both. Construe either and you have a contradictory understanding.
This ends part one of my explanation of ideologies. Hopefully this helps you obtain peace in understanding how these work together. Next time maybe I'll discuss Science and Faith and hopefully that will also resolve so many misunderstandings and illogical debates.
N. D. Moharo
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