Censorship

Yes, it’s Florida again — I’ve written before about Governor DeSantis whose decisions and actions are unchecked by the Florida legislature with its massive Republican majority. His ongoing battles with the largest employer in the state, the revered Disney World, is shocking and may tank his political career. Add to that the resident craziness of…

I don’t speak about Palestinians often, and if I’m being honest it’s because I think doing so would be the surest way of me getting banned from social media and being labelled as an antisemite for all time. It sounds cowardly, I know, but it’s true. My thinking is that…

Listen to a reading of this article (reading by Tim Foley): ❖ The biggest impediment to free speech is people’s belief that they have it. Not censorship. Not refusal to platform critical voices. Not the war on journalism. …

Readers are what make all this worth it — I’m not going to stretch this out, but this morning I received a few comments thanking me for my perspective and I thought, writing is meaningless without readers. It’s a dialogue about life, good, bad, and weird. After publishing for several years here and a little over a year on…

Medium is a platform with great potential. It allows independent writers to post stories and possibly earn a small amount of money for doing so. It’s a bit like Twitter’s grown up brother: microblogging posts, but longer form- and everybody is welcome to sign up. But Medium is never going…

Oops — In a story about book banning last month, I opened with this line: “Every time I think I’ve run out of things to rant about, some elected official in my state proves me wrong.” That article referred specifically to county commissioners in a local school district, but my prophetic comment…

Hannah Arendt’s seminal work, “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” published in 1951, provides an incisive analysis of totalitarian regimes, with an emphasis on the totalitarian systems that flourished under the Nazi and Stalinist regimes in the 20th century. Her description of totalitarianism as a novel form of government, distinct from other…

Why censoring books really is a big deal — The rise of book bannings in the U.S. has forced librarians and advocates to defend intellectual freedom. Although most Americans oppose book banning, the vocal minority continues to challenge literature. This begs the question: Why is book banning so serious when there are many other ways to obtain literary materials…

Bing’s self-censoring —