Tag: art ramblings

“For decades, the liberals have pretended that they can be anti-big-business, anti-commerce, and anti-marketing — while still being staunch defenders of free speech. But in a free society — where art and literature are not monopolies of the state — the private sale and marketing of books, movies, music, etc., is the indispensable means by which artists and intellectuals express their ideas. The phrase ‘a free marketplace of ideas’ is not just a figure of speech — and it’s no coincidence that the Federal Trade Commission, created to impose sweeping controls on business, is now being used to spearhead controls on art.”

“As a last ditch attempt to hide the truth from the public (and, I suspect, from themselves), the censors have claimed that they prefer to have the industry accept new ‘voluntary’ guidelines — backed up by the threat that if filmmakers don’t ‘volunteer’ to muzzle themselves within six months, the tanks will start rolling in.”

“It is the job of our intellectual leaders to expose these smokescreens and sound the alarms against would-be censors. They haven’t been doing their job, so we have to do it ourselves. “

from The Censorship Smokescreen By Robert Tracinski