Censorship is Not the Answer

Many aspects of America’s popular culture are repulsive. Any tacit code of morality is stretched by our willingness to explicitly defy it. If all you see is pornography and Jerry Springer, if all you hear is angry metal music and brutalizing rap, and if your only impression of the justice system in America is its attempts to deal with repugnant moral and sexual corruption and violent breeches of individual liberties, then America will appear despicable. But the way in which many of the horrifying aspects of American culture are circulated distorts and abstracts them. Jerry Springer exploits the sexual perversions of participants on his show by painting fantastical portraits of lives in which every feature is founded on debauchery and shame. Jerry Springer does not present people; he directs a theatre of grotesques. This is not America! The fact that participants are not accurately portrayed on these daytime television shows does not change the fact that someone has to be twisted enough to create and perpetuate them, nor does it change the fact that an audience fills its theatre and millions watch from their TV sets at home.


I have never been able to stomach the pain I see in the participants’ lives (I still cannot watch films with gratuitous violence and crudeness – not just because I think it’s destructive, but because I do not enjoy it) but I do not believe this demands full-scale censorship. My distaste is my preference. But a higher preference of mine is not to indiscriminately impress upon others my preferences. This is the argument D’Souza uses to defend the right of Muslims to choose for themselves the type of society they want to create. We can promote democracy in Iraq, but we should not impose American democracy. D’Souza says, “most European countries have democratically chosen to relinquish some of their economic liberties in the interest of economic security. So why can’t Muslim countries choose to give up some of their civil liberties in order to promote civil morality?”6 This is actually a convoluted argument for freedom rather than security. Freedom, not myopia, allows a country to order itself as it would choose. Ben Franklin said, “Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” But is choosing security an expression of a sort of meta-liberty? The freedom to choose requires freedom. Franklin’s words are important because if security or moral standards are chosen, they must be implemented in ways that do not utterly restrict individual expression. Therefore I do not advocate for censorship. A Muslim country may democratically decide to implement a code of propriety; I believe there should be space to challenge standards. Without opposition, belief becomes meaningless.

Some opinions and beliefs are better than others – they are more right – and I want to incorporate these beliefs into my belief system. But I believe learning what is better and what is worse is an individual responsibility. A government or community can set the conditions that encourage people to make better choices. That’s what public education is. But no one can ever make another person grow. By watering a plant, we make conditions favorable for that plant to grow; we are not making the plant grow. D’Souza says, “Imposing values through popular assent is what democratic politics is all about.”5 Pragmatically, this may be what democracy has come to. But I do not believe democracy is really about imposition. Ideally, democracy is a process. It is an active arena in which ideas and values can compete. Some values are inevitably going to “win,” but it is anathema do assume that this means opposing ideas should thus be censored.

I agree with D’Souza when he says, “Pornography promotes a trivialization and dishonesty about sex that is unhealthy for human development.”1 But I also believe firmly that limiting freedoms inhibits both the growth of individuals and society and their potentials for manifesting greater happiness. Censorship is not the answer. Censhorship “does not protect victims from predators so much as it regulates an illicit market that cannot be suppressed but can be kept underground.”2 A central question of censorship is, Who is doing the censoring? Why do some people have the right to squash the opinions of others, and what motive other than power and greed does anyone have to enlist himself as censorer? “If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”4 How can censorship be justified?

Some argue that a society has the right to censor values that would undermine that society. All societies have values. Inevitably some people will have opposing values. But silencing the dissenters halts growth and deflates meaning because “[a]ll silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility.”3 Most great ideas throughout history have emerged in opposition to common beliefs. Imagine if Copernicus’ ideas had not survived. He was harshly ridiculed, yet today it is impossible to imagine living in an earth-centric universe. Abolition was staunchly resisted in part because there was no model upon which to base a society without slavery. Imagine the many beliefs common in the world today – in Iraq and in the United States – that will be utterly obsolete a century from now. I suppose that’s one reason to favor censorship: my beliefs, the ones that are so great just because they are mine, will continue to dominate. A genuine vision for the future of the human race incorporates the right to dissent.

In conclusion, censorship is dangerous. Although I do not condone the behavior and morals prevalent in much of American popular culture – what is apparently our international image, I find censorship to be even more distasteful. As the lesser of four evils, vote Candidate D. His proposition of “limited censorship of sex and violence in popular culture multimedia” does not entail the imposition of his beliefs. Rather, D is actually advocating for regulation, not downright censorship. In order for a plant to grow, some conditions must be favorable.




1. Dinesh D’Souza, The Enemy at Home (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 127.
2. Ethan A. Nadelman, “The Case for Legalization,” in Today’s Moral Issues, ed. Daniel Bonevac (New York: McGraw Hill, 2006), 174.
3. John Stuart Mill, “On Liberty,” in Today’s Moral Issues, ed. Daniel Bonevac (New York: McGraw Hill, 2006), 148.
4. Ibid., 148.
5. D’Souza, 189.
6. Ibid., 262.