70 percent think that books that show terrorists how to build bombs should be banned from public libraries. 44 percent say that tobacco ads should be prohibited. Paul McMasters, First Amendment ombudsman at the Freedom Forum, said that the poll results, which were further broken down demographically by sex, race, income, age and political affiliation, dispel the myth that only members of the Religious Right have a censorious streak. It shows that censorship advocates are not merely religious conservatives but cut across the political spectrum. Really the message of the survey is that there is a gaping disconnect between what people perceive as expressive freedom and what it truly means.
Most people embrace a flaccid and utterly meaningless definition of our most precious liberty.
But that' s not how freedom of speech works. Free speech protection only has meaning when it is available for speech that' s extreme, outrageous and offensive. Popular messages are not in need of constitutional protection, since they are in no danger of being suppressed. A call for censorship is a call for a shift in power from the people to the government. Support for a ban of books on bombs is the same as supporting the government arrest of any science author who describes the chemical properties of an explosion, or any librarian who stocks such a book.