A Problem of Free Expression: Censorship

There are two main natural aspects in which human beings behave: one is to oppress and the other is to be oppressed. There are also two other different natural ways in which human beings live: to express themselves so that they will be understood in the manners that they want to be understood, or to have no opinions and to accept others' opinions as ways to learn and to understand others. The results of these behaviors are freedom of oppression as well as freedom of speech, or freedom of expression. Springing from these matters is the matter of censoring ideas or opinions expressed in written forms, and this is a problem that I am going to analyze in the below paragraphs.


Some human beings cannot live without showing or describing themselves or mentioning about their concerns of other people. We also learn from Hobbes that in the state of nature, human beings will inevitably be led into conflicts with one another in efforts to preserve themselves. Thus, life is constant struggles among a society. Since any society has a government to control the activities of the citizens in a country, there will certainly be agreements and disagreements between citizens and the government, or between different organizations, individuals, etc., and thereof, the control of the government over these disagreements, especially disagreements in writing or speech, eventually leads to the problem of censorship. There are many kinds of censorship: censorship conducted by the government, censorship conducted by private organizations, and even individual censorship.


First, I will talk about governmental censorship. In our text book, Law and Philosophy, in Chapter 5, Section A, John Hospers writes:


Government is the most dangerous institution known to man. Throughout history
it has violated the rights of men more than any individual or group of individuals
could do: it has killed people, enslaved them, sent them to forced labor and
concentration camps, and regularly robbed and pillaged them of the fruits of their
expended labor. Unlike individual criminals, government has the power to arrest
and try; unlike individual criminals, it can surround and encompass a person totally,
dominating every aspect of one's life, so that one has no recourse from it but to
leave the country...


Thus, when people are opposing something in the ruling policy that the government doesn't do correctly or violating their rights, they express their oppositions by speech or writing; as a result, sometimes, the government will eliminate parts of the documents written that will harm its reputation, and this is what governmental censorship is about. It is the true value of the writing piece, or parts of it that the government doesn't want to know or doesn't want to be exposed to the public's knowledge. Sometimes, the government suppresses it because they believe that it is not true or because they deny the truth of it.


Other kinds of censorship is the censorship that is conducted by private organizations or individuals. For private organizations, the reason for censoring is the same as the reason of a government; that is the documents are protesting against the reputation of that organization. Sometimes, a writing expression is not protesting against an organization but against the government, and the organization still eliminate parts of the document because they are afraid of being condemned by the government and therefore to censor it on behalf of the government. Individual censorship can also happen; for example, when one person is writing something that may harm another person's reputation, the other person would not allow that information to be proliferated, and will extrude that information from circulation.


There is an important matter that needs to be aware of about censorship; that is, it is not only used to protect the reputation of an individual, an organization or a government, but it also is used to benefits or gain advantages over the opponents. And this is the most selfish kind of censorship because it takes advantages from others using its own power. For example, the use of censorship for monopoly purposes, or to prevent better ideas or conflict ideas that one organization or an individual can do to another organization or another individual. This kind of censorship, of course, will violate the rights of some people and therefore can be considered as non-violence fights among people or groups of people. Only justice or fair judgments can be used to determine and prevent this profitable problem.


What are other nature reasons for freedom of speech or expression and for the cause of the problem of censorship? According to John Stuart Mill, in our textbooks, in the article "Truth as a Value of Free Speech", mankind has a tendency to seek wisdom and knowledge as well as ways to possess happiness; therefore, the need for intellectual advancements is what causes mankind to have speech and expression. In addition, as I already mentioned in the above paragraphs that to tell the truth is what construct or initiate free speech or expression, Mill presents the same concept:


Instrumental defenses of free speech focuses on one of two values promoted
by free speech - truth and democracy. Utilitarian John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)
took up the case for truth, and his On Liberty (1859) has become its classic
defense... According to Mill, speech competes in a marketplace of ideas, where
truth and falsehood try to outbid one another. Society has no reason to think
that it has enough knowledge to predudge whether a claim is true or false. If
society suppresses a truth, it denies itself a valuable piece of knowledge; if it
suppresses a falsehood, then it denies the fuller understanding that comes from
contrasting truth with error. The argument, of course, assumes that truth will
prevail in the long run under conditions of open discussion. (Simon, 230)



Thus, we see that to suppress an expression or a speech is an action against the progression and the innovation of human life whether the value of that expression or speech is true or false. In case of a suppression of a true expression or speech, it becomes oppression or coercion if government is involved. However, we also should know why censorship is allowed as former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Well Holmes remarked, "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shoutint fire in a theater and causing panic" (Simon, 233). Thus, censorship is useful when used to limit some types of speech such as fighting words, libel, obscenity. In these cases, censorship doesn't violate someone's private right; instead, it protects society from being exposed to unwelcome indecency or sensuality expressed by insolent people. And I agree that this kind of censorship should be maintained because nowadays, there are many literary works, press columns or journal articles that use many cursing words, and describe scenes that are considered sexually dirty, and especially the pornography problem that can have bad influences on virtuous or moral values.


Moreover, censorship is used beyond the above basic need of preventing immoral values; it is used to limit harmful speech or expression: "Mill justifies limiting speech with his harm principle, which states that actual or potential harm to others provides the only justification for limiting speech. If a person's thought or action would harm another, then the government is justified in imposing limitations" (Simon, 233). And the second case for limits on speech or expression is that all the harmless forms of speech are not equal and that some forms of speech or expression have higher values than others. For example, in this case, political speech receives more protection than commercial speech that is false, deceptive, or misleading.


In conclusion, in my opinion, if the purpose of censorship is to prevent immoral values to be taught or expressed to good and virtuous citizens, and to promote virtuous or moral values against bad and vice actions then this kind of censorship should be maitained and practiced. Or if the purpose of censorship is to prevent harmful speech or expressions that can deprecate or devaluate the value or reputation of individuals, organizations then it is also should be maintained and approved. However, if censorship is used for oppression or suppression purposes such as to take advantages from others or to impede the truths or to make profits then it is certainly bad and should be limited or prevented.





References


Simon, Thomas W. Law and Philosophy - An Introduction with Readings. New york: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2001.