Censorship

[dazzleman]

It all depends what censorship means.  People have a way of twisting the meaning of censorship to suit their own definitions.

Government should not be telling private citizens what they can say, but that doesn't mean that private concerns like television stations, hotel owners, etc. have to allow any type of performance in their medium, if it means they will lose money as a result.

Tipper Gore was vilified by the corrupt entertainment industry in the mid 1980s for advocating warning labels on obscene or violent records.  They called it censorship but it wasn't.  It was meant to warn parents about what was contained on the record, so they could decide whether to allow their children to have the record.  There never was anything wrong with that.

Of course, the same people who scream censorship inappropriately all the time are looking to impose censorship on those who don't agree with them by branding anything they don't agree with as "hate speech."  Anybody who admits, for example, that blacks have a higher crime rate than whites is practicing hate speech, according to these people.

I think we should agree on a definition of censorship before deciding whether and when it is appropriate.  The left in my opinion has a very distorted definition of this word, as well as many others.  As Orwell warned, the first step toward totalitarian is distortion of the language, and I have seen it in this country so many times it's scary.

[dazzleman]

Just hate speech. That way Santorum won't have much to say.

Neither would much of the Democratic "base" in that case.