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Patrick Powers's avatar

"I remain mystified by the notion that it's acceptable to censor what Americans view or read, provided that the source of the censored information is non-American."

Domestic sources of undesired information are more easily punished than are foreign sources. Therefore foreign sources are more dangerous.

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Mark Kennedy's avatar

(?) In the second place, one of logic's most basic and intuitively obvious rules is that the concern of a syllogism's conclusion is limited to what's already implicit in the syllogism's premises (duh!); so from premises that concern themselves with relative ease of punishment we can draw no conclusions whatsoever about danger. (More economically, Patrick, you've simply misused the word "therefore.") And in the first place, returning to the relevant issue, there's zero guarantee that information "undesired" by would-be censors is also undesired by the people prevented from reading or hearing it. Does anybody here truly want self-appointed gatekeepers arrogating to themselves the responsibility of making desirability decisions for them? Do you?

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Patrick Powers's avatar

Undesired by those in charge.

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Mark Kennedy's avatar

Both elected and unelected officials have various responsibilities, and in order to meet those responsibilities they have to be in charge of certain things. No official is or could ever be responsible for deciding what I want and need to know, though, or for assembling information in my cranium. Like everybody else, 'officials' of all stripes included, I'm in charge of providing my personal decision-making with whatever it requires to function effectively. This responsibility can't be delegated, even if I were so confused and foolish as to want to delegate it, and anyone who tries to expropriate it from me is seizing a freedom that's both rightfully mine and essential to my ability to navigate life as an autonomous human agent.

This isn't a claim to be all-wise and all-knowing. On the contrary, it's a simple acknowledgment that, whatever my limitations, at the end of the day I'm responsible for informing and exercising my own judgment. There's no one else to do it. In effect, we're all condemned to be in charge of ourselves and can't outsource this in-chargeness.

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devoalan's avatar

Except that fifty percent of the country at least are slack jawed mofos that swallow every little tidbit fed to them, and repeat it without so much as a thought. So when one of our founders said this government is for a moral and educated populace and will not survive any other,he was right.

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Mark Kennedy's avatar

Yes, this is something I've thought about. The Enlightenment heritage that bequeathed us our notions of democracy and individual liberties in the first place (along with public libraries, public education, and the supposition that each person, if left free of tyrannical interference, would naturally make the most rational decisions on behalf of his or her own best interest, which would then sum to create the most rational and happy of societies) was, after all, the product of Enlightenment thinkers; and perhaps if everyone were an Enlightenment philosopher this model would have worked as intended.

Alas, as my father was fond of repeating, "You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear." Regardless of how adroitly societies are structured, if the people operating the structures lack competence the results are going to be disappointing.

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Patrick Powers's avatar

They no longer even pretend to uphold these ideals. No wonder the viewership for government-dominated media is plunging drastically.

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Jala's avatar

But is it really? Patrick

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