On Monday, August 29, 2005 at 7:10:39 PM UTC-5, Sam wrote:

reposted:
Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk
From: Sam McClung <s...@flash.net>
Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 21:51:49 GMT
Local: Wed, Oct 17 2001 4:51 pm
Subject: Why Censors Always Fail In Free Societies
For if Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter, which may
involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration
of Mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and,
dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.
General George Washington, address to the officers of the army, Newburgh, New York,
March 15, 1738. - The Writings of George Washington, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick, volume
26, page 225 (1938)
I can imagine no greater disservice to the country than to establish a system of
censorship that would deny to the people of a free republic like our own their
indisputable right to criticise their own public officials. While exercising the
great powers of the office I hold, I would regret in a crisis like the one through
which we are now passing to lose the benefit of patriotic and intelligent criticism.
President Woodrow Wilson, letter to Arthur Brisbane, APril 25, 1917. - Ray Stannard
Baker, Woodrow Wilson, Life and Letters, volume 6, page 36 (1946).
Without free speech no search for truth is possible, without free speech no discovery
of truth is useful, without free speech progress is checked and the nations no longer
march forward toward the nobler life which the future holds for man. Better a
thousandfold abuse of speech than a denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day,
but the denial slays the life of people, and entombs the hope of the race. Attributed to Charles Bradlaugh. - Edmund Fuller, Thesaurus of Quotations, page 398
(1941). Unverified.
Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail. In the long run of
history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against
bad ideas is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path to
wisdom is a liberal education.
A. Whitney Griswold, president of Yale, "A Little Learning," The Atlantic Monthly,
November 1952, page 52. Address to students at Phillips Academy, Andover, New
Hampshire, spring 1952.
Without an unfettered press, without liberty of speech, all the outward forms and
structures of free institutions are a sham, a pretense - the sheerest mockery. If the
press is not free; if speech is not independent and untrammelled; if the mind is
shackled or made impotent through fear, it makes no difference under what form of
government you live you are a subject and not a
citizen. Republics are not in and of themselves better than other forms of government
except in so far as they carry with them and guarantee to the citizen that liberty
of thought and action for which they were established.
Senator William E. Borah, remarks in the Senate, April 19, 1917, Congressional
Record, volume 55, page 837.
Our nation stands at a fork in the political road. In one direction lies a land of
slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call
and hustling, pushing, and shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything to win.
This is Nixonland. But I say to you that is not America.
Adlai E. Stevenson, The New America, ed. Seymour E. Harris, John B. Martin, and
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., page 249 (1971) These words were written in 1956 during
Stevenson's second presidential campaign.
I have always been among those who believed that the greatest freedom of speech was
the greatest safety, because if a man is a fool, the best thing to do is to encourage
him to advertise the fact by speaking. It cannot be so easily discovered if you allow
him to remain silent and look wise, but if you let him speak, the secret is out and
the world knows that he is a fool. So it is by the exposure of folly that it is
defeated; not by the seclusion of folly, and in this free air of free
speech men get
into that sort of communication with one another which constitutes the basis of all
common achievement.
Woodrow Wilson, "That Quick Comradeship of Letters," address at the Institute of
France, Paris, May 10, 1919. - The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, ed. Ray Stannard
Baker and William E. Dodd, volume 5, page 484 (1927)

And so it failed leaving behind splinterings in the neo era "We're polite politically correct censors...er, uh, moodraters" gruppes begging for monies to sustain them in their quest to buoy the faltering publishing industry.

“If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should be open to all—except the censor. We must know
all the facts and hear all the alternatives and listen to all the criticisms. Let us welcome controversial books and controversial authors. For the Bill of Rights is the guardian of our security as well as our liberty."
JFK, Saturday Review, October 29 1960

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