Reader Mail

The following was a response I recieved to my "eff censorship" post that I'm posting because it deserves some public reading. Don't think I'm making fun of it, she's pretty much right.

Just for the record, our firewall blocks a lot of stuff, including, www.annefrank.com, (until I unblocked it.) Real human beings don't do the blocking, and it is far from a perfect science. After all, in order to publish on this blog, you have to abide by certain rules and maintain certain standards. If you don't, they won't publish you.

Throwing a term around like "censorship" is kind of a red flag for me since librarians use the term in odd ways all the time, but every time we choose to buy a book and not to buy another, in a sense, (in the sense you use the term), we are "censoring" the book we choose not to buy. So in that case, what is the difference between "censorship" and "discernment?"

It is extremely difficult to squelch ideas as extremists of all types have discovered to their sorrow. Our streets do not flow with the blood of people who have said or written what their governments do not allow them to say or write. It seems a bit bombastic for Americans to even use the term "censorship" as if it were something we seriously suffer for. MH