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Guys and gals, firstly, I want to thank you all for contributing to this thread. It means a lot to me because this topic means a lot to me, personally. Censorship, in any form, is one of those things that really hits a raw nerve in me because it's about restricting a person's worldview. At the same time, however, I agree with LordSlaytan that some forms of censorship are reasonable, necessary and inevitable--I certainly wouldn't want my kids to be reading hardcore pornography at an impressionable age.
Let me quote an anecdote that a friend of mine recently related to me. He told me about Mark, a Russian immigrant to the US that he is acquainted with. Mark went to a grocery store wanting to buy some coffee. He asked the store manager for some coffee. The store manager directed him to a shelf in the store which was stacked with a variety of brands and types of coffee and told Mark that he could take his pick--choose whatever type of coffee he wanted. Mark was so shocked that he literally began hyperventilating--the concept of choice was so hard for him to handle that he went into shock. Apparently, he said, in Russia, if you want to buy coffee at a store, you have to stand in line and they simply ration it out to you. And if they run out, then too bad.
So the concept of choice and abundant availability of a product was so shocking to Mark because it conflicted with the worldview that he was indoctrinated with from youth, having been born and brought up in a totalitarian system in the Soviet Union, in which the state basically decrees to you what you can or cannot do or think, how much you can eat, what you can eat, where you can work, etc. He realized that he was basically being lied to by his own government, under the pretext that they were protecting him. The concept of free choice was, as such, alien to him.
So, I guess, (to cut a long lecture short), it's a big deal, and something one takes for granted in a progressive western society like the US. At the same time, however, this is a society in which the media is being increasingly being dominated by monolithic conglomerates, so the issue of freedom of information is still a valid issue.
Point is, that's the whole point of the internet, of a forum like this one--expressing your point of view, however different it may be--having a voice and getting your point across, even if no one agrees with you. So I think it's a pretty important issue, and no less relevant today than at any time in the past. People should be free to speak their minds--that's what the forefathers of this great nation fought for (well, one of the things, at least--to them taxation without representation was the real fighting cause). And, also, it's one of the reason's that the Reagan administration challenged the Soviet Union (the other being capitalism, of course).
That's me on my soapbox! I'm just glad we're having a discussion here and that people are freely expressing their points of view, because that's what an internet forum is all about, right? So thank you all again!
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