Below is the opening of the article:
In the early 1970s a publishing house approached author Ray Bradbury asking to reprint his short story, “A Fog Horn,” for a high-school textbook. Bradbury refused upon learning that the editor of the reader deleted two phrases from the story: “in the Presence” and “God-Light.”
This particular incident prompted Bradbury to add a coda to his most well-known work, Fahrenheit 451, in which he wrote: There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist / Unitarian, Irish / Italian / Octogenarian / Zen Buddhist, Zionist / Seventh-day Adventist, Women’s Lib / Republican, Mattachine / FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse.
Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.
Bradbury is just one of many whistle-blowers who have felt an obligation to speak out against the witless censorship of overly sensitive interest groups. A compelling addition to the literature is New York University education professor Diane Ravitch’s exposé on censors of American public education, The Language Police.
In case you missed the link above and would like to read the article, you can do so at:
http://www.hoover.org/publications/policy-review/article/6560
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More Thoughts On The Communist Manifesto
When I was considering which title to use for yesterday's entry the most obvious one was The Common People Are Revolting but then, on second thought, I realized that this title was somewhat ambiguous; it could be taken two ways, depending on the reader's immediately perceived definition of the word revolting.
Think about it . . .
The first line of Chapter 1 in the Manifesto is: 'The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." That sentence alone is a subject for much additional research (by me) as well as for some original personal thought.
The chapter's second paragraph states:
Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
What has changed since the above words were proclaimed? The governments of the world have proven the veracity of what was then merely proposed and the people have come to realize this. The common people have also come to realize that they can do something about it, by demonstrating before the cameras of the media and thereby notifying their various corrupt and criminal governments that change is mandatory and will be enacted immediately or peaceful demonstrations will end and devastating violence will ensue.
What has not changed in today's world? Class distinctions, that's what. Class envy is, of course, the desire for supposedly underprivileged persons, groups, or cultures to wrest these privileges from those seemingly more fortunate folks who presently enjoy them.
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A while back I took a couple pictures of Eva doing her thing out on the swimming pool deck.
Eva On The Run
Eva Versus A Fly
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The Kids Are All Right is a movie that I now feel is a must see. after reading a review by Greta Christina but I suppose I should wait a while until the price(at eBay or Amazon used) for the DVD comes down to where I feel I can afford it. Or maybe I can borrow it from my local library.
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