Hester's husband was motivated by vengeance fueled by inhuman and unforgiving hatred. One of the most interesting things that emerges from a reading of 100 Banned Books is the ultimate futility of all censorship. Though the Bible , for example, has been one of the most censored books of all time, it has also had more translations and more editions than any other book in the history of publishing. Most other books that at one time or another had met with the fury of rigidly dogmatic people who cannot seem to abide whatever doesn't adhere to whatever absolutes they hold sacred, have also done well in the long run. Milton has it right in his Areopagitica .
Freedom of expression encourages freedom of thought.
Suppressing free expression merely drives free thinking underground. From there it is destined to emerge again. The whole point of the liberal arts is to allow us to think our way clear of the prejudices of our time and place, or to dismantle the possible illusions that may lurk in the conventional wisdom of received opinion. As I say in several of my writings elsewhere, the enemy of critical thinking is habitual ways of thinking. Back to Home Page Copyright 2000 - 2001 by Steven C. Scheer.