Pick your own debate - 1B

Art - Censorship 1. Freedom of Expression is vital to everyone and it's one of the most important parts of our Constitution. However, expressing yourself (and then refusing to accept responsibility) is Constitution Abuse. The foundation of my argument is NOT that musical artists don't have the right to publish and distribute their music. They do. Rather it's their blatant refusal to accept responsibility for the music they publish that leads me to believe that some of the music should be censored. My opponent's may say that I'm arguing to "take away artistic rights." My response is that artists give up those rights when they refuse to admit their music is having an effect on those who listen to it. If artists would step up to the plate and admit their music has an effect on listeners (and that the emotional effect is intentional) then maybe I'd be less prone to argue for them being censored. Musical artists who publish explicit albums like to put responsibility for negative behaviors resulting from their music back on the listener. And yes, the listener is responsible. However, the artists are also responsible. My rationale can be summed up in one question to be asked directly to musical artists. "IF YOUR MUSIC HAS NOT EMOTIONAL EFFECT ON YOUR AUDIENCE, THEN WHY SHOULD WE BUY IT?" When I went to school, I was taught that the purpose of art and artistic expression is to make an emotional connection with your audience. The goal of art is to create music, novels, paintings, sculptures, etc. that get people to emotionally connect to a certain idea. Therefore, if Rap Music Artists or Heavy Metal Bands publish music suggesting that people should kill each other, rape each other, or steal from each other etc....how could they not be somewhat responsible for listeners going out and performing those acts? They are intentionally creating an emotional tie between the listener and behaviors that are harmful to others. If an artist claims that his music has NO EFFECT on his listener, then the artist is essentially saying that his music does not make any type of emotional connection with his audience. Therefore, how can his music even be considered art? Now, if an artist wants to say that his music is "art", then he has to admit there is an INTENTIONAL and PRE MEDITATED emotional connection being made between the himself and his listener. This connection creates an influence on behavior. Therefore, there is a level of responsibility that should be placed upon an artist for those behaviors (up to and including censorship in some cases) Artists who publish music with positive messages admit this to be true all the time. They say things like, "I wanted to release a record that would motivate people and help them through difficult situations in their lives." How many songs do each of us have in our music libraries that lift us up and motivate us to do better things? Lots! In many ways, the artists who publish these songs influence us and the actions we take. So why is it when some artists publish negative music we claim there's no emotional connection, and thus no responsibility on the artist? Clearly there is. We all have freedom of speech. And we're all responsible for what we say. Artists have freedom of speech too. And artists are responsible for what they say. In the case of allowing music artists to publish explicit music, we're affording them all the rights and privileges of the Constitution, but we're not asking for any responsibility in return. What's wrong with this picture? Cases where artists publish music promoting violence and anger, and then refuse to accept their responsibility by hiding behind the Constitution is abusive to the very foundation they use to protect themselves. Therefore, we the people who respect and defend the Constitution have no other recourse than to censor those who are exploiting our principles and many members of our society. We all have rights. However, rights are not free. They come with a price. And it's time we started asking those people who abuse rights to start paying up.