LISNews: - Comments for "Censorship activists move outside the library" Comments for "Censorship activists move outside the library" en Finally it is probably less <p>the idea of restricting religious and other freedoms, than an effort of one religious group to force its own view of the world onto everyone else in the nation. The censors and religious fanatics would not be as dangerous if their intent was to assert their own rights to beleive what they beleive. It is the intent to supress all other positions to advance their own that presents the real danger. </p> <p>Had a Christian Rushdie who presented a view of Christianity in the same way Rushdie presented Islam, I do not think many of the people who came out in defense of Rushdie would have been so quick to defend this sort of author.</p> Sat, 22 Nov 2008 20:14:31 +0000 Anonymous Patron comment 36570 at P.S. <p>I also suppose that had censors of earlier ages had their way, most of what has created our rather badly named "Christian civilization" never would have occured. Most of the ancient works that spurred on the western Renaissance were banned works that had to be either smuggled into Europe from Islamic Spain in the 11th Century or later brought from the Eastern Byzantine Empire through translations from their contacts with the Islamic world and cultures further to the east like China. The local keepers of the public morals insisted that there was nothing of value in these works because they contradicted the religious views of the day, and many who dared to buck that trend ended up being burned or otherwise treated as heretics and criminals.</p> <p>Well, there is nothing new under the sun, and the same sort of people who burned Giordano Bruno at the stake, and subjected Galileo to the Inquisition are still very much alive today.</p> Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:42:49 +0000 Anonymous Patron comment 36566 at As Goethe said <p>"Where they burn books, so too will they in the end burn human beings"</p> <p>Censorship in any form usually results in other forms of repression.</p> <p>Much that is considered great literature was also at one time considered to be obscene in the western world. For years delicate western sensibilities resulted in rather poor or bowdlerized translations of works like 1001 Nights. The world was scandalized by Burtons direct translations, from a culture in which things that were pretty much normal to the human condition were considered, well , normal. Even then in Burtons own preface to his work he is reduced to making statements that the mundane nature of the average reader, he is reduced to making his statements in French. "Le peuples primatifs n'y endendent pas malice: ils appellent les choses par leur noms et ne trovent pas condamnable ce qui est naturel". In English this would have offended.</p> <p>How much that is considered classic would not exist today had he censors of the past had their way. Censorship is more harmful than anything else and it offers nothing that could be remotely considered positive.</p> <p>In every era, there are censors who claim to be protecting something with their efforts at censorship. Censorship over the past 30 years has not seemed to improve society very much. In fact it seems that over the last 30 years, many of the conditions which censors seemed to wish to protect society against have gotten worse, not better.</p> <p>Censorship serves no purpose other than repression, and in spite of the efforts of censors, the things which are censored inevitably end up in the hands of those who the censors inted to protect, usually in less than optimal circumstances. Try to keep the Harry Potter books out of a child's reach, the kid will still get copies, and the sense that the child is doing something forbidden will make it all the more enticing. This takes both the child, and society, in directions which are less than optimal, and usually negative.</p> <p>The experience of the Danes with pornography is a good example. The Danes are bored with it. Only tourists from more repressive cultures take trips to indulge themselves.</p> Sat, 22 Nov 2008 19:23:30 +0000 Anonymous Patron comment 36565 at