The Juxtaposition of Intellectual Freedom in a Political Psyche

The Juxtaposition of Intellectual Freedom in a Political Psyche

All that humanity has accomplished, discovered or overcome is carefully and eloquently preserved within the pages of books. Books have become the chosen medium of human history. The magnificence and glory that these invaluable pages command is infallibly essential to the continual advancement and perpetual maintenance of our familiarity and comprehension of the world in its entirety. Although books are the more traditional means, as with all things evolution has prevailed providing us with many other resources of recorded knowledge. For pristine preservation to take place, the individual documenting the information must remain unbiased. However, since it is human nature to follow the converse, many pieces of literature and fact are influenced at least partially by the author or editing company. An inevitable clash of wills and morals takes place--and whenever such a class has been established, censorship mediates.

More than any other source of information, it is books that are prevalent and available more readily than competitive mediums. It is unmatched in its infinite spectrum of topics that can be both broad and isolative. The frame of time that books have been employed as the tool of the intellectual is unfathomed, since it is the historically dominant record of life in its entirety. Books further establish our religion, promote literacy in our youth so they can perform the skills deemed necessary for day to day American life, and many other functions we wouldn't dare live without.

Education is synonymous with books. What has been discovered and improved upon is recorded in these same invaluable pages that can simultaneously provide endless entertainment whether it be leisure or intellectual advancement being sought after. Limiting the resource that has brought us to where we are now would be contradictory to both the American psyche and continuing prosperity of our intellectual development as not only individuals but as a culture. Conversely, the very reason a book may be censored or banned entirely to a community may be the exact reason it is revered and noted as a piece of fine literature. Ipso facto, many of the censoring parties have their own agendas.

What further establishes the ridiculous restrictions on these books regarded unfit and obscene is the people regarded as respectable and capable of setting the limits to what society can and cannot access. This clash of morals takes place day to day between the teacher or librarian who finds a work worthy or unworthy of students' and community members' time; and the parent or citizen who sees little literary value in the work in question. Seldom is the teacher or librarian alone in their train of thought that a work is justified or otherwise post-reflection, over-contemplating and over-dramaticizing the conjectures its readers will establish. Blanket statements and generalizations should be reserved for the weak-minded and over-cautious individuals who prefer to strictly adhere to the predetermined paths in life, never developing the worldliness achievable through further and never-ending education. To further oppose the contradictory incongruity of the subject at hand, this is all rampantly taking place in the "Land of the Free," the United States.

There is a strong correlation with freedom and knowledge. Strangely enough, one of the figureheads and advocates of book banning and the pro-censorship movement of Church Hill Publications stresses the frightening demographic of idiocy he belongs to "...It is obvious that if the world is round, then those people who live on the bottom part would fall off. I believe that this teaching of round earth material is simply designed to encourage disrespect by children against their parents and an attempt to cause children to think for themselves instead of believing what we teach them"(Delfattore 30). What does this ludicrous statement say about these fanatical ill-bred cretins? It's hard to comprehend how any credit is given to whatever it is they have to say. Further establishing the lack of intellectual prowess behind the censorship movement is more of the right wing extremists that started the snowball effect of momentous mainstream censorship and their pseudo-constitutional plea against the freedom of information. Hawkins county protestors apparently "...described themselves as born-again fundamentalist Christians, [and] based their entire understanding of reality on their particular interpretation of the Bible. In their way of looking at life, all decisions in life should be made by looking upon the bible, using of course, their individual inferences" (Delfattore 36).

The United States has a legacy of independence and sovereignty that is unprecedented anywhere else in the world. The United States has always been unparalleled and distinguished by the freedoms and liberties that its citizens take pleasure in. Through this nearly unfiltered regime, we have economically and technologically advanced to levels of superiority unrivaled in outlying countries. An authority on censorship, Grant S. McClellan explains it in a nutshell, "At the heart of the matter lies the fundamental right of the public to be fully and well informed about any aspects of the past, as honestly, as accurately, and as objectively as is humanly possible, even if that truth may be uncomplimentary" (McClellan, 166). Knowledge can spread faster, easier, uncensored and in the context it was intended. Censorship is the adversary and opponent of such liberties.

If knowledge is the driving force that creates such unequaled dynamism that propels the United States forward, then it would seem ludicrous and unreasonable to restrict and place limitations upon such advancement and evolution of society. Dictatorships have never rivaled the United States in any aspect, therefore reverting to this prehistoric mindset that we have already outgrown during our own historical rebellion would be farcical. This is what censorship does, and the more momentum its opponents gain, the more severe the cap will be, eventually escalating to unreasonable and frightening Aldous Huxley-esque proportions.

Furthermore, when a restriction is placed upon anything, a taboo is inevitably established that oftentimes promotes the original intention of restriction to implode, feeding it as a desired tool for the weak-minded and more susceptible to carry out actions associated with the original restriction's intentions. That is, if a book is banned for its obscenity, an individual who becomes aware of this will find other mediums to access it through and discern specifically through the literature to pinpoint and concentrate on the negative connotation rather than