You Want Censorship? Be Careful What You Wish For

Censorship is an ugly thing.  Imagine trying to make your point on whatever topic, only to find out that your opinion is not allowed.  This happens every day.  I see an argument being made that it's just "the marginalized" in this country, blacks, women, the LGBT community, but it goes deeper than that.  It's just that the divide and conquer technique being used to pit us off against each other based on our differences is a popular method used by the those in power.  It's not just a gender or color thing.

Go back enough years and there weren't as many platforms for one to express their opinion, but there was still censorship.  The newspaper or TV refusing to acknowledge a certain viewpoint was one way of doing it.  You could get into trouble at work for simply expressing an opinion of disagreement over company policy.  Let's say you wanted to go to the people.  Perhaps you distributed fliers or newsletters to the people or maybe you just spoke on a street corner for all to hear.  You could get shut down there too.  All you had to do was dare to offer a point of view that went outside the norm.

We have the online platform now.  You can make a video or audio blog.  You can simply go to Twitter, Facebook, Blogger or any one of a number of places.  If you speak outside the normal confines of what the establishment has deemed acceptable, and this doesn't mean it has to be racist, pornographic or anything like that, you can get shut down.  They are doing it if you question anything the media says or the official story on something.  Donald Trump gave them the meme of "Fake News" to use, and that's one way they go after you.  Offer an opinion, lay out your argument and evidence for all to consider and they will still shut you down if those in power don't like it.

I'm hearing of people being censored after others called for it.  Commonly, it's used along political lines.  This "conservative'" opinion is racist because I don't agree with it or this "liberal's" opinion is bad because they are Anti American.  So, you have average people calling for banning free speech simply because they don't agree with it.  It's not a left or right issue, it's a freedom of speech issue.  Freedom of speech was never put into The Constitution to protect popular speech, because popular speech is generally not in danger of being censored.

People who claim to love this country should stop and think before they ask for somebody's free speech to be terminated.  First of all, good things have happened because people spoke out against the bad, and history is full of those stories.  Secondly, when you call for others to be silenced, you're opening the door for censorship to just be accepted, mainly on the grounds that it hurts somebody's feelings.  Be assured that if it becomes acceptable to silence opposing views, your views may be next on the chopping block.