A little closer to home...

What about the categorical denial of the Japanese-American internment camps and what those citizens were forced to endure, or the bombing of the Marshallese Islands, or the true history of the Hawaiian Islands, or the capitalistic raping of third world country's natural resources? Again, we have a form of systemic censorship, one of which amounts to the censoring of public education about the shortcomings of the government in certain times of crisis. What about peaceful demonstrators being physically separated from the crowd during publicly held meetings for wearing t-shirts which held former president "W" in a negative light?

Censorship of information is everywhere, and it - perhaps - should be in some cases, but where is the line drawn? It certainly is not at 'Yelling "FIRE" in a crowded movie theatre.' Is it possible to *truly* inform through the existing public education system which has produced a population of people that are so easily pursuaded through rhetorical bullsh*t?

Not as long as the system continues to avoid teaching people how to think.

I cannot, unfortunately, speak of things which I don't know. That mainly being the American educational establishment and system of Governance and the history of Hawaii. However, I can say that one has to be careful to make a distinction between, facts and opinions and I mean by this that a fact is either something which happened or does invariably happen in certain circumstances and therefore that someones opinion is such and such is a fact albeit a contingent one, opinions on the other hand are views held by people about the natural world, the way governments should work and so forth. The former should never be censored, as it simply shows things as they are and it serves a purely educational purpose to know or be aware of them, the latter is debatable.

For the most part, what you mentioned as examples above seem to be purely factual, certainly they are historical occurrences and therefore it is fairly certain that something identicle to or almost identicle to what is understood to have happened actually did happen and if it is the case that these are censored in education then I am unafraid to say that I believe it to be entirely wrong, and similar to the teaching in history of Britain where the government is so caught up in 'self-hate' that they refuse to allow the teaching Wilberforce and the abolishon of the slave trade.

That deals with fact, however, the so-called raping of the third world, as cited by you is an opinion in this context due to its' subjectivity, the source of our recources, the detrimental effect on some communities of the practices of those engaged in obtaining them, the fact that many believe this is 'raping the third world' are facts and should be taught but to teach it as the raping of pillaging of the third world is propaganda for a specific subjective view. Opinion then should not be taught in schools, however, the freedom to express what one thinks and feels should not be restricted hence I would disaprove of those who try to censor opinion regarding the president, even though my views politically tend towards the right of the spectrum I would never attempt to justify the silencing of any individual on account that their opinion is unsuitable to be heard or seen.

Finally, yelling fire would be an offence (at least in Britain as far as I know, I don't know about America), if it caused a riot.

Public education involves a kind of passive censorship, in that the system cannot possibly focus upon everything, and therefore decisions must be made about what is and what is not deemed 'important enough' to take priority. I am relating that notion to the idea of a more widely held opinion of what constitutes 'ethical censorship'.

I will not get into the 'raping of third world country's resources' unless it can be done with a philosophical measure and somehow be kept in context of the thread. Doing such would require focusing upon what is publicly known through education and media. More importantly though, would be the distinction between what can be known about what *is* happening and what *is* commonly known, and that requires a comparison between those two things and more importantly - how and why those actions are are being justified, both personally by those involved and publicly. I am afraid a capitalist libertarian view fails in that regard - because the citizens are 'fools' in many ways.

I would like to see the focus here continue develop the notion of public education producing 'foolish cogs' for citizens, which is exactly what happens if one does not know how to think beyond rote learning which is framed to produce a bigger a-moral machine that (dis)regards people as a means.