Essay:Criticism of CP's Censorship Page

This essay is criticism of the claims made on Conservapedia's Censorship page. Accessed December 24, 2008. (Note: Shortly after access, Andrew Schlafly reverted a point that addressed Conservapedia's own censorship. Since I did not counter this claim, it has little impact on the essay.)

Conservapedia claims that censorship "is the suppression of statements or information for ideological reasons." This is not entirely accurate. Censorship instead is the suppression of any information or media for the basis of security, or because said information or media is objectionable or too provocative for political, moral or commercial reasons. Ideology is only one of several aspects of reasoning to censor something.

Examples Conservapedia claims for censorship are based solely on their own definition, which itself is not accurate. Here I will discuss each separately.

Conservapedia's article then shows more of their ideology at work. They quote:

In the United States, the First Amendment states that "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." Broadly speaking, the First Amendment is designed to prevent the government from exercising censorship. However, the government sometimes censors political and religious speech anyway.

What's missing in those ellipses?

. . . respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or. ..

Why would they leave that out?

They then claim:

More specifically, the government should not exercise "prior restraint." That is, a citizen should not need advance permission from the government in order to publish something, unless it threatens national security. This does not mean that publication may not have consequences: a citizen can be sued for publishing libel, or incarcerated for disclosing military secrets, but the consequences typically occur after publication, not before.

No examples are given about citizens requiring permission to publish something not including that covered under national security. Why this is brought into their article is unclear.

The rest of the article is about censorship based on moral and obscene grounds. Saudi Arabia censors Christianity. United States censors nudity more than the French. Claims like these.

At the end, though, Conservapedia includes a link to Liberal censorship, but offer no links to Conservative censorship. Are they admitting again that CP practices censorship on ideological grounds? If so, it goes against their claimed differences from Wikipedia.