Censorship - Alanis doing more harm than good?

distortedrumble said:
so whats jessica simpson's excuse?
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that she's blond, and can't help it, maybe? :)

Boy am I glad I live in the almost censor-free country The Netherlands :)
 
Halion said:
that she's blond, and can't help it, maybe? :)

Boy am I glad I live in the almost censor-free country The Netherlands :)
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Are you really "censor-free"? You may have no trouble saying "dirty words" or showing nudity in public, but every culture has taboos. Take Aaron's example about Canada, for example; it's against the law to publicly speak out against homosexuals there. That's censorship. In America, public figures who make racist, sexist, or anti-semetic statements are scandalized. Again, censorship. Is there an outcry about it? No. Because even if people did support racism they wouldn't want to be publicly identified as such. Remember that baseball player a few years back who was suspended from the team and sent to counseling for making racist statements?
I'm not saying racism is a good thing either. But if I can respect the fact that the "n-word" offends blacks, why can't other people respect the fact that blaspheming Jesus offends me?
The deeper problem facing America is that we have an increasingly polarized culture combined with an increasingly homogenized media. Liberals and conservatives don't just disagree anymore; they no longer even understand one another and as a result both sides have adopted a "crusader" mentality. Rather than trying to work out solutions that at least partially please everybody, it's just an all or nothing battle between two extremes. And caught in the middle is a media industry who wants to please everybody for the sake of selling as much material as possible.
What we need to do is cut out all the "crusader" mentality and the posturing and start asking how we can all get along. I mean, on one hand, we can't subject the whole country to one set of morals that only a certain percentage hold. On the other hand, we can't marginalize everyone who happens to have morals and enforce the lowest common denominator.
It goes beyond simple issues of censorship. It gets down to the heart of whether the great American experiment will work: a truly free and truly pluralistic society. It sounds great in theory, but it's only been the last few generations that we've had to deal with completely incompatable worldviews sharing a single culture.
 
LOL church and state cant be seperate because the church tells people how to live. now if the church told its members how to live in church and not how to live in the rest of the world.....there would be a few more possibilities there. its hard to live free when your next door neighbor decides to witness you because he feels you need to be saved. or what if your other neighbor is muslim....i have a few friends over and we light up the bbq...cant invite the neighbor because he doesnt drink or eat pork. now how much fun do you think he'd be at the party? and on top of that.....if i have a christian on one side and a muslim on the other side......my house is in the middle of a religious war zone! and the worst part about it is the christian would say "that sucks but he had his chance to be saved" and the muslim would say "they are all infidels! they do not follow the teachings of allah so they must die!" between christians and muslims, the person who just wants to get his paycheck and have a beer on the weekends with some pals is the one person both sides see fit to destroy, or dont care if they destroy in the process of their own agenda. which wouldnt be so bad if this was happening in israel......but its in america! NO SHIT IN THE BIBLE HAPPENED HERE! JUST RELAX! but of course...its only free if your culture is the only one that exists
 
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