I think the fact that it ever was illustrates my point perfectly. I put it forward as a hypothetical example of government overreach, and y’alls ministry of truth turned out to be way ahead of me. It is, indeed, a very slippery slope, and if you give your government the power to ban books, they will abuse it. I think this inevitable abuse is far more dangerous than the contents of books could ever be.
That’s almost a tautology, but it doesn’t describe a system with anything you could reasonably call a free press. By that measure you could easily ban anything William Burroughs wrote, or anything about transsexual rights, until it was mainstream, or really just about anything.
Edit: Looks like the Aussie book-burners were way ahead of my hypothetical extreme example again. Naked Lunch was banned there for 13 years. That’s fucked up, and if your government can do that, you can’t claim to have freedom of press.
