The Assumption of Censorship

One sign of paranoia: The belief that the Establishment is censoring you … even in the absence of evidence.

My introduction to this was the time I read: “You won't find these ideas in a university library!” in a university library. Another example is the belief that chain bookstores would never carry anything by Noam Chomsky. Shortly after I read that claim, I checked a Borders bookstore and found a shelf full of Chomsky's books. (Or is that why it's out of business?)

On the other hand, self-censorship appears to be common. I don't even mean self-censorship of what you speak but self-censorship of what you read. It's amazing how many have never heard of the ideas that liberals could be fascists (as described by Nobel prize winner Friedrich von Hayek as well as Jonah Goldberg or even Steven J. Gould) but also the evidence showing that “primitive peoples” did not preserve their environment intact, the fact that Hannukah is a celebration of armed resistance, and even the fact that the roundness of the Earth was well known in the Middle Ages. Maybe we should fight that instead of blaming an Establishment.

I'm reminded of this by the comments here on a possible Google experiment on filtering web sites by factual accuracy. Even if someone tries using that for censorship purposes, it's unlikely to last. For a while Google was shutting down anti-Obama blogs. They had to backtrack on that. The experiment might be an example of a common phenomenon: Leftists attempting to devise an objective test that they imagine will prove conservatives are scum. This is then followed by dropping it when the test gives answers they don't like.