Karl A. Krueger a écrit:
On Tue, Mar 29, 2005 at 05:30:08PM -0500, Poor, Edmund
W wrote:
RK emerged from his lonely exile to comment that
censorship is
suppression of IDEAS.
[snip]
When a junior high school library decides not to
shelve Lady Chatterly's
Lover (or The Story of O), that is most definitely censorship. Whether
you think pubescent students should be "shielded" from sexual texts or
not, the ACT of shielding them has a name, and it's called "censorship".
While I can understand both definitions of the word "censorship", I
think it is far more useful to draw the distinction around the type of
behavior that seeks to suppress ideas or deny points of view a public
hearing, as opposed to that which simply refuses to support particular
points of view.
For instance, it would be absurd (it seems to me) to state that when I
choose to buy novels by Neal Stephenson and not to buy novels by Stephen
King that I am "censoring" King by not supporting his work, granting it
space on my bookshelf, or recommending it to my friends. To define
"censorship" this broadly makes the term meaningless.
Censorship, it seems to me, needs to be defined in terms of a space of
discourse, and an act of intrusion upon it. There have to be speakers
who want to speak, listeners who want to listen, and an act which
stifles the speech for the purpose of keeping it from being heard by
those who would choose to hear.
(Government schools are such a bad example, and so frequently cited,
precisely because they come already politicized. They are supported
with taxpayer funds which people do not have the choice to withhold;
everyone is compelled to underwrite whatever the schools teach.
That is why people get so agitated when government schools teach things
they disapprove of -- not just because *someone* is teaching sex or
religion or whatever, but because it's being done with *our money* and,
in a republic, with the presumption of the "consent of the governed".
When than consent has *not* really been given, people get indignant at
the presumption.
Wikipedia has none of those problems.)
unless....
unless we start making deals with government (by accepting their
offering of cash) or with educational system (by sharing grants to
develop certain things to them).
Then, if you add up the cases where people provide by direct individual
donations (which makes them feel ownership in a certain sense) and the
realisation the project is financed indirectly with their taxes...