From: Dale Thorn <dthorn@gte.net>
Date: Sat, 9 Nov 1996 10:03:42 -0800 (PST)
To: bryce@digicash.com
Subject: Re: Need a new word for non-violent-censorship
In-Reply-To: <199611081134.MAA16008@digicash.com>
Message-ID: <3284AF63.3A14@gte.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Bryce wrote:
> I often have the same difficulty when speaking with
> Objectivists.  They define "censorship" as "silencing the
> speaker by force", which is a fine and useful definition, but
> suppose we want to talk about a similar phenomenon which does
> not involve force?  For example, the magnate who owns all the
> newspapers, television stations, bookstores and movie theatres
> in a small town decides that never again will homosexuality be
> publically mentioned in any of these venues.  Force?  No.
> "Censorship"?  Not by _that_ definition, but what _is_ it?
> We need a new word, or else we have to continue using
> "censorship" to mean both of those things.  I sometimes use
> "violent-censorship" and "non-violent-censorship" in conversation.
> As long as we continue to try to overload "censorship" we will
> waste much of our dialogue energy on semantic quibbling or pure misunderstanding.

I don't see how you can say this.  I was brought up by this wonderful system (U.S.)
to believe that censorship was necessarily non-violent.  It was only when I became
conscious of "Assassination as the Ultimate Form of Censorship" that I saw the
broader connections.

Seems to me you'd want to come up with different words for violent censorship instead,
but then again, as in the above paragraph, we already have those.