The so-called morality groups like to try to ban books from schools and libraries, try to expand the scope of laws promoting censorship, and incessantly harass stores that carry Sports Illustrated (due to the Swimsuit Edition), Playboy, and other periodicals that their ilk take offense to. Recently, moralists (the infamous PMRC) succeeded in labeling records deemed offensive, in addition to meddling with artists rights in other ways.
Count on it, this censorship will never stop and will only get worse, at least as long as we allow it to continue. In the moralists' eyes, censorship makes everyone better off because there are fewer things available to tempt anyone to do what is wrong. (from their narrow point of view) Instead, as most everyone else must come to realize before it's too late, censorship in any form makes America a blander, harsher and a less free society. Who elected these moralists to make these decisions for us anyway? (to be cont'd)
[The original version of this essay first appeared in Eastern Connecticut State University's Campus Lantern student newspaper and in my unpublished manuscript "In Mediocrity We Trust... In Debt We Die" And Other Essays.]
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