Alex Martinez
Mr. Humphrey
English 4
12 May 2014 ART MUST BE CENSORED! Censorship is never over for those who have experienced it. It is a brand on the imagination that affects the individual who has suffered it. I agree that we should censor art because there are graphic and it can affect us in dreadfully. People that are (Con) may say “we have the right to see the all the bad things and how people suffered”. Well I believe that if we don’t censor art young children will see it and therefore it will scare them and hurt them. If art isn’t censored parents will feel be offended and people will protest that we cover this up because our children will see it and discover the terrible things back then. People that experience will hurt them twice as much to so you should censor art. All these ideals I have put down are true but if we do not stop this then what we will do, how will the young peers feel or think about this art. Will they cry, laugh or just stare at it in doubtfulness. How about the war veterans how would they feel would they want to know what one of their best friends look like again. I know I wouldn’t want to know what one of my friend looks like because that would be painful and so sad. Censorship of the arts is necessary in a pluralist society, because it protects traditional family values. Censorship of the arts is necessary to protect both children and adults from images and other artistic content that lack redeeming social values. The promotion of traditional family values is beneficial to society, because it encourages strong family core beliefs, which promote efficient working values and economic values. Artistic content that opposes traditional family values and lacks other redeeming social interests is harmful to society and should be opposed. People that are Con might say believe that, during the course of refutation on my opponent's arguments, the necessity for censorship will become quite apparent. Clearly, the freedom of speech is not unlimited; this right generally pertains to the opinions expressed by an individual, or the information dispersed by an individual; however, hate speech being an example, free speech must often be limited in order to protect the public at large from distasteful, even offensive material; therefore, we can see that censorship is often necessary for the sake of safety, while still maintaining a reasonable level of free expression. This idea is further reinforced by my opponent near the end of his paragraph, in which he states that people ought not to be punished for their speech unless it is "bullying, inciting a riot, inciting violence, causing panic or threatening someone." The problem for my opponent is this: punishing someone for using this kind of harmful speech is censorship, something that my opponent claims to be looking to abolish; we can easily see the contradiction here. What my opponent is advocating here is that, under the law, children ought to have access to violent and sexually explicit materials (as he makes the argument that age limits on violent movies, pornography, etc. ought to be abolished); anyone should be able to understand that a child should not be exposed to these kinds of materials, especially at such