WHAT CENSORSHIP IS TO MANNERS

 Another marvellous exposition from that current master of the English language; Theodore Dalrymple. In the attached short article he examines censorship and defends the older definition of it while exposing its newer manifestations to deserved scorn.

Another reason for approving of censorship, at least of the better sort, is that it is generally arbitrary and absurd. This gives the writer a worthy enemy and prevents him from doing truly destructive work. As children need authority the better to test limits without bringing disaster on themselves, so do writers. In fact, writers should be grateful to censors for giving their work impact when they have gone just a little beyond what was previously permitted. George Bernard Shaw brought the house down with Eliza Doolittle’s exclamation, “Not bloody likely!” What few words nowadays could have a similar impact?Politesse is more likely to cause a scandal than the bluest of blue language.

In his mind censorship can be viewed as a discipline, and the polar opposite to what we in the post-modern world would rail against, and decry as impinging on our 'rights'. 

"....and in fact, complete freedom of expression has led to an impoverishment of expression, because one doesn’t need to think of alternatives to the first expletive that comes into one’s mind—or is it one’s f…..g mind? 

The actual truth of the matter is that censorship is alive and well and breeding within the subterranean sub-conscious of the totalitarian left.

 Thus censorship comes to exist in a supposedly free society, without any need of government oppression; it necessitates self-censorship, but it is censorship of the worst kind, for it leads to a situation in which only one view of the subject can be aired in public.

In the current Australian intellectual zeitgeist, these are the people who really believe themselves to be morally superior, and because they occupy the 'moral high-ground' they should be the ones to proscribe how we act, speak and even what to think about.  

These are the same ones who have re-engineered the schools curricula so as to rewrite history in their image. 

These are the bullies who propagandise us into positions of self-censoring those ideas or expressions which run counter to their understanding of what they consider to be the Utopian society; a multicultural, gender-neutral, eco-paganistic, collectivist parody of  a pseudo-Marxist, cultural hegemony (known in Labor circles as Fabianism).

 http://takimag.com/article/in_praise_of_restraint_theodore_dalrymple/print#ixzz3Jm55EiV2