Areopagetica
I especially like Milton’s argument on page 218 where he says if we regulate printing we must regulate everything. His method of pointing out the ridiculousness of licensing is quite to the point, as well as pointing out how impossible it would be.
I agree with Milton when he says that to remove the instruments of sin will not keep man from sinning. Even the common people who can’t read know how to sin , or are taught how to sin.
Books are books and whether they are “bad” book or “good” books. A person will take what they want from them. Wayne C. Boothe echos Milton in the aforementioned and that books should not be censored. To do so would cramp and stifle a writers creative flow.
I like the comparison of truth to the streaming fountain. If there isn’t a continuous inflowing of new ideas and honesty then our minds would become stagnant and bogged down . I had not heard the story of truth being torn apart and thrown to the four winds, and that her friends are still looking for her. That WE are still looking for truth but will not be wholly successful until His second coming. I think too that truth is strong and it will prevail against all in the end. People seek truth in everything, if they feel they haven’t found it , or it is being held from them , they will continue to pursue it.
July 2nd, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I agree that we need a constant flowing of the honest truth, of ideas, of genuine human nature and experience that is pure. I wonder if sin draws into this perfectly? Removing the instruments to sin will not keep us from sin. So, sin is as natural and true an occasion for man kind as any other true idea. Perhaps not ethically correct, but true, very real, and very human.
July 3rd, 2008 at 2:50 pm
I know exactly what you mean when you say that people who believe the truth is being held back from them only work more tenaciously to find it; it’s made even more appealing by the fact of its secrecy, and this, too, is a problem with censorship. What’s hidden becomes more important to us, whereas without censorship we can be more objective about the ideas presented because we haven’t been biased by the pre-judged ideas.