“Censorship is usually a tool of those who are intellectually weak, but politically strong.” (Nick Freitas @NickForVA on Twitter)
Exactly.
The only way to impose censorship is through brute force — usually, government force.
If you’re rational and therefore confident in your conclusions, you don’t “need” to censor others. You only “need” to censor others if their contrary views make you feel threatened in some way. “What if this person is right? He’s got to be silenced!”
People censor — in psychological, not political terms — all the time, in families and relationships. The faulty premise behind censorship is, “If I get these comments or ideas out of my consciousness, then they don’t exist.” Kind of like the pre-cognitive two-year-old, when you play peek-a-boo. He thinks you’re not there when his eyes are covered. Similarly, the censor unthinkingly assumes that if he can just GET RID OF THE COMMENTS, then the threatening ideas won’t be there.
That’s absurd on its face. But the quest for political censorship continues — even, sadly, in post-America America. If you thought the First Amendment — noble and true as it was — meant that this was the end of censorship for human beings, then you can now see how wrong you were.
And believe me: today’s totalitarians are just getting started. Why shouldn’t they? So far, they are getting away with EVERYTHING.
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