October 17, 2008 | In: Truth, Worldviews
Not Really Censorship But Still Not Acceptable
The day after participating in a panel on censorship in which I defined censorship as the use of the power of authority to silence the public expression of ideas, I ran across this article on one of my book seller forums.
Political extremists attack bookstore owner,staff
The article is about a bookstore owner who has been literally threatened and attacked by conservatives for selling books by political and social liberals such as Barack Obama and Joe Quint.
Lightweis said the attitude, which she described as arrogance, goes beyond the routinely childish pranks she has to put up with such as covering up the Bill and Hillary Clinton biographies with books by Ann Coulter. She said many of her 18 employees have been verbally assaulted and said the outrageous behavior displayed by some customers has cost her money in insidious ways such as time spent arguing or apologizing to other customers who have had to witness an outburst.
The bookstore owner calls these attacks censorship. I disagree with her use of the term. These people have no real power to censor anything. They may be expressing their opinion that these books should be censored, but they are not censoring the books themselves.
However, to say that these actions are not censorship is not to condone the actions. The verbal attacks and the physical damage done by these conservatives are nasty and even criminal. Frankly, I don’t understand these actions. These books are expressing ideas. If we believe these ideas are wrong, we should publicly refute the ideas. We gain nothing by trying to silence those ideas.
This judgment against these violent acts would be true even if the bookstore were blatantly liberal. According to this bookstore owner, her choice of books is based on the market not on her personal views.
“Where were these people when I had 60 copies of the (Kenneth) Starr report (on Bill Clinton) for sale right next to a cigar aficionado display?” she asked. “Where were they when I had two full displays of Sarah Palin’s book just five days after McCain named her to his ticket?”
[. . . ]
“I realize this is an important election, perhaps more important than most,” she said, “but to arrogantly make the assumption that my choice of books reflects my political personality … When I come into this store, I’m a capitalist, and I’ll compete with the best capitalists in the country.
Violent responses to publicly expressed ideas are not truly censorship, but they are horrendous and illogical acts no matter who performs them. Those of us who love the Truth have nothing to fear from the public expression of ideas. We should be engaging these ideas with reason, not trying to silence them with violence. Acts of violence, sabotage and vandalism are acts of cowardice.
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