The Pros And Cons Of Censorship

What is Censorship? Wikipedia defines it as, “the suppression of speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions.” There are many definitions out there for censorship, but the key word that I almost always see is suppression. I think that alone shows that censoring limits freedom and that it is morally unacceptable. Censorship is should not be permitted, because it goes against the 1st amendment, the government could easily use their new found power and control the public in many negative ways, there is no solid rules stating what is actually considered moral

In a perfect world the government would always want the best for us and would never take action to purposely hurt or manipulate the public, but unfortunately a perfect world doesn’t exist. When given a large amount of power, it’s extremely common for people to abuse it. Wicclair agreed with this as well and stated, “… officials and groups might use the power to censor as a means to advance their own interests and values and to suppress the rights, interests, and values of others.” (Wicclair 242) Because of this risk, it would be immoral to give them the power to suppress individuals and limit their own freedom of expression. To allow the government to have control over censorship could have so many negative impacts on society. “There is a serious risk that once any censorship is allowed, the power to censor will, over time, expand in unintended and undesirable directions.” (Wicclair 242) At the first sight of something that is deemed unpleasant all they would have to do is snap their fingers and then suddenly its gone, but what if it what they censor is actually something of importance? Or, what if some huge issue is going on in the world but the public has no access to know what it is? With the power to censor, come the power to omit information. That in itself is a

Some say just movies and the radio should be while others go as far as saying any type of art portraying “bad things” should also by censored. The phase “bad things” is also subjective because what I think is bad and what you think is bad could be two completely different things. Secondly, in the event of nudity, the human body shouldn’t have to be hidden at any age it’s obvious that we all have our own bodies. Females are females, males are males, that’s never to going to change. We shouldn’t hide it. By embracing the differences, the child will grow up with the belief that the human body isn’t “impropriate”. In addition to that, hiding the human body and language is just denying the inevitable. They will learn about these things eventually. Why put it off? Instead of banning it from their lives, it would be much more beneficial if the parents would teach them why they shouldn’t participate in these actions. That leads in into my final rebuttal, if things were uncensored and taught to children there would be a huge decrease in desire and curiosity. Anytime something is hidden from you and you feel determined to know it creates a desire and curiosity to uncover the unknown. If treated as if there is nothing to hide then the extreme amounts of curiousness and desire subsides and the desire to rebel would also decrease too. With censorship in place, these desires and curiosities would more than likely