CENSORSHIP 2023

Can books doom civilization?
Should they be censored?
Should history be censored?
How about words?
George Carlin proudly proclaimed his 7 words that could not be said on television. To this those ‘words’ are bleeped’ on TV and relegated to cable shows or movies.
But, unlike sticks and stones, words cannot harm us, unless strung together into hate phrases meant to incite riots.
Our cherished 1^st Amendment preaches that.
So, should books be banned?
We rate movies as fit for certain age groups but allow parents to be the ultimate deciders.
What about schoolbooks?
Take Isaac Newton sitting under a tree and an apple supposedly falls on his head leading him to discover gravity and write about it in his 1687 “Philosophy Naturalis Principia Mathematica”?
At the time this was a radical idea.
If he was shunned as a heretic and the book banned, then what of all the discoveries based thereon?
Where would be today?
Well, for one thing we would not be on the moon, or mars, or even, perhaps in the air!
Did George Washington cut down that cherry tree?
Was there a race massacre in Tulsa Oklahoma in 1921?
One of those two is true, yet the false one is in history books and celebrated in folklore.
What terrible harm could there be from teaching both events as they really were?
An old western trope states that when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
But in an educated society the legend must be noted with an asterisk directing the reader to a footnote explaining the difference.
We live in a time when many believe the moon landing was faked, the Earth is flat, and a Jewish rabbi, born in the middle east over 2,000 years ago, was white, had blond hair and blue eyes!
Events that are happening today are already being ignored and stricken from history books.
If we continue down this road of ignorance how long before we have to deal with versions of Orwell’s Ministry of Truth in our daily lives?
It has been said that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
But if we allow censorship to keep our children from learning about history, good or bad, we’re all doomed!