I agree that people are too eager to categorize someone as "conservative" or "liberal" since most people's views vary depending upon the subject.  For instance I have many views that most would call liberal and I also have many other views that most would call conservative.  I think this applies to most all of us, but at the same time I don't think one should confuse this with being moderate.  People tend to be rather opinionated, even if their convictions are well distributed, so I'd hesitate to call most people moderate.  It's the subjects that we are less opinionated on in which we hold some moderation.  But it's my opinion that we're all a little too far left and too far right.  Usually people who are strongly opinionated seem less content than those who's opinions are born more from logic than emotions.

     As far as censorship is concerned I'm for less of it.  I think the government is already breaching our Bill of Rights as it is, and there ought to be more responsibility and trust put in the nation's people.  As for television in particular, I believe that worrying about "crude" language, violent acts, and sexuality on television just goes to show how pampered, meek, and overly-sensitive our culture has become.  During the civil war boys as young as thirteen fought in bloody battles,  and before we had the luxury and convienience of modern life people, including children, were much more regularly and intensly exposed to the bare realities of life, which violence and sex are just an inherent and natural part of.

First off I would like to point out that we or look back to the Victorian Era and commenting back on a time when men where aloud to masturbate women to orgasm as a cure for hysteria and women how show their ankles were considered loose. The then the spectrum of that time period would have been considered liberal for the majority of Americans.

I have not been able to watch the videos that go along with this discussion, but after reading over the discussion I have an idea of what the censorship video is about.

I see myself in the middle of the spectrum.  Because politics are not a major interest of mine, I think I find it pretty easy to look at ideas presented to me and make opinions that vary over the different parties.  I feel like I can often see both sides of an arguement, making it difficult to pick a side or shoose what is necessarily "right."

On the issue of conservatism and censorship I can see why conservatives would desire keeping things how they are now or even how they used to be.  Change can often be an uncomfortable thing and it is something that no one has control over.  However, it is a natural thing and I am thankful for that because without it we would still be living like cavemen. I think conservatives fear this natural on many level, one of which being people's sef expression.  People have become a lot more open about self expression and as a result, people are getting more and more offended by what is being said and done.  So is it the government's job to control what can be said and done?  Should people be allowed to say and do whatever they want and others just learn to accept it?  Where is the line and when does it get crossed?  I have no absolute answers to these questions, but in my opinion I find myself leaning towards total free speech.  That is one thing America boasts and to start setting restrictions and cutting people off in their opinions just seems to contradict that.  A lot of times people do espress themselves in ways that are seen as culturally inappropriate, but I think that that is one of the things that encourages them to do so.  Knowing it is in appropriate guarantees a response to it.  If people just accepted all forms of expression and didn't make a fuss about them, then maybe those inappropriate forms would lessen as a result.

I consider myself to be more towards the right side of the spectrum. I like the views, but I don’t always agree with the choices that are made. I happen to like change, but only when it’s needed. This article gave me the impression that being conservative is not something that is good. It’s true that the core of conservatism is the resistance to change, but that’s not true for all of us. I also agree that during times of crisis, people tend to become more right-wing than left-wing.

The article was inaccurate in the fact that most conservatives are intolerant of different things, and that leads them to arrive at premature conclusions. I think that that can only be said for the far, far, far right conservatives; not all of us.

The censorship videos were extremely interesting. When the play “Sapho” came out, some people were outraged. Things began to be censored left and right: 19,000 dirty pictures were confiscated, and close to 17,000 dirty poems, stories and other things were found. Even the actress who played Sapho was reprimanded. She had to go to trial and everything; but that didn’t stop the peoples’ interests. The government did all they could to censor things, and it didn’t work. In fact, uncensored shows became more popular.
This was especially right in the 1980’s when the government tried to censor heavy metal. Groups like the P.M.R.C (lead by a democratic senator’s wife) tried to put an end to explicit lyrics in the songs; the republicans felt they were obligated for the country to retain moral sanity. Dee Snyder and Tipper Gore fought it out. They eventually reached a compromise: a warning label would be put on the albums that had “dirty” or explicit lyrics. While this was meant to be a slap in the face to Heavy metal groups, it actually backfired on the people who were trying to censor them. The warning label was a guaranteed sale factor.

In both of these examples, censorship was something that was meant to be a “help,” but it quickly became a marketing factor that brought more and more people in to watch. It seemed that conservatism was slipping through the cracks.