Essay/Term paper: Censorship: freedom or suppression ?

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Politics

Censorship: Freedom or Suppression ?


Government censorship can be looked at as a blessing or an unneeded burden.
I personally feel that all censorship is completely unnecessary and should be
found unconstitutional. It is the countless moral views that bring no right
answer for what should and should not be censored. I know that the governments
version of censorship varies greatly from mine, just as mine does from a world
wide view.
The citizens of the United States are living in a pure democracy that
has given us all first amendment rights. This alone should mean that their
should be no government intervention on a code of ethics or morality. This
should mean that we as citizens should be allowed complete freedom of our own
choices. Our government was set up to make laws and to keep our society in order.
They were doing a fine job until they started making decisions for us on what is
or isn't decent. The most recent example of this is the Communication Decency
Act of 1996(Located in the Telecommunications Act Of 1996). This act more or
less states that the Internet should be censored and be given restrictions. The
first issue this brings up is who owns the Internet. No one really owns it
because it is really thousands of computer networked together. The main backbone
of the Internet was originally made up of government funded universities and
other government institutions. However that is no longer the case. Now the
majority of the Internet is run and operated by independent services and
everyday citizens. The Internet is a modern day symbol of the freedom of speech
we have in our society. The government has no right to tell us what we can and
can not do in our homes. No one is forcing anyone to go to any specific area of
the Internet for anything. These are all choices made with our own free will. I
feel that the government is clearly violating the fine line between church and
state. The Job of the church is to keep up moral and ethical standards in our
world. Obviously the government got the wrong job description for clearly they
are violating the trust they have in the Church doing its job.
I know that if they put me in charge of censorship things would be a lot
different from how they are today. The first step I would make would be
censoring all Ex-lax and Imodium D commercials. I find it extremely peculiar
that these commercials always seem to appear right during dinner. Not only do I
find these commercials offensive, but I am also repulsed by the poor time slots
the commercials are characteristically shown in. The next action I would take
would be censoring WWF wrestling. I find the men in their partially clad
outfits to be extremely disturbing. The sport also does nothing more than
promoting violence. Both verbally and physically. The last thing I would remove
would be the infomercials on TV that not only take away from the precious
moments of our lives, but they also take an extremely repetitive approach which
degrades the sense of the viewers intelligence. This I find to be most offensive.
You may not see eye to eye with some of my viewpoints, but that is where
censorship is clearly impractical. Everyone has different moral and ethical
viewpoints on whats right and wrong. Who is to say what we can and can't see and
hear? Obviously we know the answer of that question to be the government, but
who is to say that they are right, and that they are actually helping us become
better humans?
Different cultures fail to share the views we have with the entire
censorship issue. The best example of this is the Internet. If we were to censor
the Internet, a lot of the material could not be taken down due to the
acceptance of the material in the foreign country the site is located in.
Obviously other countries see no need for censorship. The issues that we find
offensive are openly dealt with in other countries. One can only assume that our
government is therefore taking away more of the freedom that we as citizens
living in a free democratic country deserve to have.
As you can see, along with our freedom comes the need for us to know
what is wrong and what is right. If the government would allow all the material
it finds indecent, there would be less of a problem with the material. People
eventually get used to things, and they loose their shock value and soon these
things are no longer perceived as wrong. If the government would drop their
entire censorship kick, I have full confidence that people can censor for
themselves what they perceive to be right and wrong.