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Ellis
English 101
Mr. Schultz
13 October 2006
Censorship
Every country needs to have a certain degree of censorship on the materials that
the citizens are allowed to see. The amount of censorship and the content of documents
that are being censored vary with everyone’s personal opinion. However, all countries
have decided that new military documents are classified. In order to protect the soldiers
who are over in other countries collecting this data. Others have argued that even more
Plato has suggested that we divide society into three different groups. Those
groups are the commonwealth, the soldiers and the philosophers or leaders, and each
group should receive its own information. Anything that doesn’t advance the purpose of
each group should be considered classified information. For the commonwealth, they
should only be given material that talks about being a good worker. The soldiers should
only be taught about bravery and courage. Philosophers and leaders must only be taught
how the gods interact with each other. For all the information that these groups can
receive, only the positive attributes should be given. Plato believes that if they hear of
any negative idea, they will turn to corrupt and greed. Once evil ideas are introduced,
people will act upon those ideas and the society will crumble.
John Stuart Mill has a complete opposite view of Plato. He believes that all
people should be allowed to receive any information that they so desire, as long as it does
not harm someone else. Furthermore, everyone can do anything that he or she so desires
as long as it doesn’t harm someone else. However, he also acknowledges that every
action that a person commits has the potential to affect somebody else. Since there is that
potential he suggests that when somebody is harmed it is necessary for the harmer to be
punished.
The views of Plato and Mill have the potential to work. However, neither of the
two views are the optimum solution for censoring information to the public, and
influencing the way people interact with each other. The reason why is that neither view
factors into account human nature. That is that humans have a tendency to try and
influencing human interactions is to setup laws that regulate the things that most
frequently affect other people, such as alcohol consumption. Also, the government should
only allow all information except the information that affects soldiers and other military