The matter concerning is not only who practices the censorship but also how it is practiced. Since different men make different comments on the same work of art, for example, it is hard to set up a measure by which we could decide whether one should be prohibited, especially to the work of arts, as its content always labeled as “subversive” and “revolutionary”, two words detested by the governors most. Such cases could be found in Ulysses by J. Joyce and Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H Lawrence, these two great novels were firstly considered to be guilty of obscenity and were put to prohibition by the American government, but turned out to be true masterpieces today. So any form of censorship, to some extent, lags behind the development of ideas and will put more or less a negative effect on their development.
Though the censorship is such a disgusting word embodying so much oppression and might, it is a compromise we made with the reality far from being perfect, to provide a comparative stable ground which we could stand on. At this point, I don’t agree with the institute like ACLU who oppose any censorship. The censorship, though rarely justified, should exist as long as a more ideal and practical form is found to replace it, or we could only expect our God to create a more ideal species instead of imperfect human beings.
