Essay, Research Paper: Censorship 8

Censorship is a variety of things from yelling fire in a crowded theater to showing sexual intercourse on television. These things aren t all either, there are millions of things we use or see every day that are censored for a reason. The reason can be many but the three most important reasons are for an adult or child s wellbeing, for the decency of our society and for privacy of each other. All of these things are censored because our lives are influenced by these reasons in one way or another. This will tell you that with out censorship we would live in a world so dirty and irresponsible so indecent and shameful that it could not exist.
We pretty much ignore the growth in violence and sexual abuse in our movies and on television. Have they gone away? According to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania, by the time an average child leaves high school, he or she will have watched the happening of 18,000 murders on television. Prime time says the National Coalition on Television Violence, is filled with degrading sexual material and incidents where violence is strongly glamorized or used to excite. There have been 85 major studies of the effects of such violence on children. Eighty-four of the eighty- five concluded that it caused an increase in all manner of aggressive behavior, up to and including homicide. What happened to the one study that disagreed? Well, they were paid off by the National Broadcasting Company that just shows how guilty they are of producing violence from television. Another study shows that American children are having sexual intercourse at an average age of 16. If the television was not censored as much as it is today these things would be much worse, our children would be sexual active at very young ages and crime rates would shoot upward. A civilization does not rise in the strength of it s laws, however. It rises on the strength of its values. What values are we teaching by not having censorship in our society?
No its not freedom of speech and its not freedom of the press. It is decency. What all civilized social orders, including our own, have consistently identified as decent, civilized behavior. The real threat to the republic is not what might happen to rights, but what is happening to a society grown dangerously out of touch with its own standards and values. At the Irvine Meadows Amphitheater in California a 17 year old girl was raped while more than 50 people watched, is that what our values should be? Social orders are established, governments are formed and laws are passed for one reason and one reason only, to protect the people. Part of that task has to do with protecting people against themselves, against the degrading and the uncivilized influences that corrupt life and are every bit harmful as a blow to the head or a gun in the rips.