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Political censorship involves a government preventing information from reaching its citizens. Perhaps the best-known contemporary example of this is China's censorship of the [[Google]] search engine, known as the "Golden Shield Project", which prevents Google from displaying search results of some human rights websites, websites promoting Tibetan independence, references to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and others. A famous example in fiction is George Orwell's novel ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'', in which the main character works as a civil servant in the department responsible for altering or destroying historical information which the government wishes to keep secret. The rationale behind political censorship is that the political party in power can protect itself from revolution if the public is kept uninformed.
Political censorship involves a government preventing information from reaching its citizens. Perhaps the best-known contemporary example of this is China's censorship of the [[Google]] search engine, known as the "Golden Shield Project", which prevents Google from displaying search results of some human rights websites, websites promoting Tibetan independence, references to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, and others. A famous example in fiction is George Orwell's novel ''[[Nineteen Eighty-Four]]'', in which the main character works as a civil servant in the department responsible for altering or destroying historical information which the government wishes to keep secret. The rationale behind political censorship is that the political party in power can protect itself from revolution if the public is kept uninformed.
Ironically, liberals and leftists have also at times advocated against censorship, although strictly so they can ensure a revolution that brings themselves and their left-wing politics into power. Examples include the communist [[George Bernard Shaw]], who had advocated the removal of censorship specifically to ensure "progress" (i.e., communism) can be brought into the UK in his preface to "Mrs. Warren's Profession".<ref name="The Author's Apology" /> Similarly, the Philosophes such as Voltaire and Diderot have demanded for absolute freedom of speech specifically to push their anti-Christian agenda on the masses, which ultimately resulted in the anti-Christian nature of the French Revolution,<ref>http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05418a.htm</ref><ref>http://myemail.constantcontact.com/JAN--11---Plot-to-destroy-Christianity-revealed-by-Yale-President-Timothy-Dwight.html?soid=1108762609255&aid=CbibQMZY5JY</ref> and the Free Speech movement in 1964 tried to allow the Communists unrestrained freedom of speech as well specifically to silence criticism against the Communist movement.
Ironically, liberals and leftists have also at times advocated against censorship, although strictly so they can ensure a revolution that brings themselves and their left-wing politics into power. Examples include the communist [[George Bernard Shaw]], who had advocated the removal of censorship specifically to ensure "progress" (i.e., communism) can be brought into the UK in his preface to "Mrs. Warren's Profession".<ref name="The Author's Apology" /> Similarly, the Philosophes such as Voltaire and Diderot have demanded for absolute freedom of speech specifically to push their anti-Christian agenda on the masses, which ultimately resulted in the anti-Christian nature of the French Revolution,<ref>http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05418a.htm</ref><ref>http://myemail.constantcontact.com/JAN--11---Plot-to-destroy-Christianity-revealed-by-Yale-President-Timothy-Dwight.html?soid=1108762609255&aid=CbibQMZY5JY</ref> and the Free Speech movement in 1964 tried to allow the Communists unrestrained freedom of speech as well specifically to silence criticism against the Communist movement. On a similar note, both the then-radicalized American Library Association and the [[American Civil Liberties Union]] (the latter of whom was partly responsible for the former's radicalization) advocated against censorship, even managing to radically interpret the [[First Amendment]] as implying a right to receive any and all information as well as protecting pornography in the Constitution and considering minors to have legally the same rights as consenting adults, all while also claiming that even the smallest limitation to any speech or expression in any capacity is equivalent to totalitarian repression. to the extent of automatically leading to it.<ref>https://web.archive.org/web/19980119060706/http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/1996/feb96/focus.html<br />"Where did the ALA's current, radically [[Subjectivism|subjectivist]]/individualist philosophy come from? The ALA, which constantly quotes from the First Amendment and whose brochures picture the Founding Fathers, would have you believe that it springs from James Madison's Enlightenment ideas about freedom. Not so. The ALA's philosophy comes from four sources: first, the later Enlightenment philosopher, Voltaire, who was hostile to all revealed religion. Second, to John Stuart Mill, whose mid-19th century writing preached that the individual is sovereign over his own mind and body, and who shifted the focus of life away from helping others toward the need to fulfill the self. Yet, even Mill believed that freedom should stop short of harm to others. Thus, he accepted the need for libel and slander laws, and believed that children needed protection from themselves. The ALA has rejected this idea of the Right to Protect and has instead accepted the nihilistic ideas of the 19th century German philosopher, Friedrick Nietsche, who preached the now-familiar refrain that "God is dead" and that there is no common good to which we are all responsible. The fourth source is Jean-Paul Sartre, the French existentialist who was so fashionable in the 1940s. He held the absolute freedom of the individual to be the highest good and yet saw all values as relative. His idea that there are no rules by which we must govern our conduct dispenses handily with Madison's idea that the Ten Commandments are necessary for peaceful self-government. <br />
"To sum up, the radical individualist/subjectivist philosophy which informs the policies and actions of the ALA, sees freedom of speech as radically extendible. Little or no attention is paid to the concept of harm to others. The right to know is always seen as more important than the right to protect, even where children are involved. And a relativist value system finds the use of standards of judgment in acquiring library material to be elitist and old-fashioned. Indeed, good and evil are seen as merely subjective opinions. Under these philosophic views, the ALA no longer encourages libraries to be responsive to the community, but encourages confrontation, viewing the community as a dangerous source of potential "censorship" against which librarians must be eternally vigilant. <br />
"When did these ideas begin to infiltrate the ALA? And who brought them in? During the social turmoil of the late sixties, the Office of Intellectual Freedom in the ALA headquarters in Chicago became very important in the making of policy. Around this time, Judith Krug began her tenure as director of that office, and in 1970 forged strong links between the ALA and the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU functioned under a philosophy of nihilism/individualism since its founding by Roger Baldwin after the turn of the century. For a time in the 1970s, Ms. Krug served simultaneously as ALA Intellectual Freedom Director and as a board member of the ACLU, which has given her several awards. The ACLU, according to George Grant's 1989 study, believes that children should have the same rights as adults, that pornography should be protected by the Constitution, that the First Amendment's free speech clause implies a right to receive information, and that the smallest limitation of any speech or expression will automatically lead to totalitarian repression."</ref>
The term "censorship" derives from ''censor'', the title of the Roman official who conducted the census and supervised public morality.
The term "censorship" derives from ''censor'', the title of the Roman official who conducted the census and supervised public morality.