So some PC twats have determined that an original work of art by Mark Twain is suitable material for "sanitization." Now, how much of the national discussion has centered around the very premise of this sanitization vis a vis respect for the integrity of an artwork?
All I've seen is debate over a less essential, less fundamental issue: how we should treat the term "nigger" in today's culture. Surely we don't solve that problem by going around and censoring "offending" works of art, do we? (It's not hard to imagine how, if anything, this censorship would only add to the country's racial problems. That's if you take a long-term view of these things, rather than a pragmatistic "quick fix" approach which is all these PC fucks ever know.) And where is the uproar about censoring works of art, which should be the immediate sense-of-life issue involved? WTF? What have we as a country come to, that this is even a subject of reasoned debate and discussion?
The essential here: reject "sanitizing"-censorship outright, as a corruption through and through. If the PC shits can't even get that right, how can we expect them to get the daunting matter of race relations in this country right? Failing to respect an artwork reflects so deep and fundamental a cognitive failing that we have to address that failing before we ever get to the issue of race relations. The nature of the cognitive hierarchy and cognitive integration demands it.
Jeezus Effing C, people.
(Thanks a lot again, modern philosophy.)
[ADDENDUM: Yes, I'm aware of how Rand used the term "censorship," as "pertaining only to government action." Her definition has hardly ever sat well with me, as we still need a term to cover any act of stifling freedom of expression. The term "self-censorship" does make sense. Rand was, however, making the obviously useful distinction between acts of government and acts of private parties - one that the leftist PC-fuck types run roughshod over on the premise that private capitalistic activities can be oppressive. A relevant factor from the standpoint of force and legality, in this instance, is that we're dealing with a public-domain work, so the issue has to do with respecting artistic expression in a more general sense.]
