The 5th Dimension – one of the best groups of the 1960s. I always loved Marilyn McCoo’s luscious voice.
Have a happy weekend! Do what you love to do! Go where you want to go!
Dawn Pisturino
May 13, 2022
Copyright 2022 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved.
“Censorship — The Assassination of an Idea.” ~Bookmans Entertainment Exchange~
What’s in the raging flame
of banned books burning?
Knowledge, truth, learning,
courage, freedom, yearning.
~Terri Guillemets~
Banned Books Week will be held from September 18 – 24, 2022. But censorship is an everyday concern, especially for writers, poets, artists, journalists, and other creative people. We’re seeing too much of it right now in the current political climate.
We’ve seen authors mobbed on Amazon and other sites and deliberately given poor ratings simply because the content of a book did not conform to the narrative of the people mobbing the book. This is using censorship and harassment (bullying) to create a politically correct environment where creativity is essentially dead. Show me one writer/artist worth his salt who is politically correct! Only sell-outs conform to the mob.
The Nazis confiscated and burned any book that they deemed “un-German.” What does that even mean? No more French porn? No Italian cookbooks? No English poetry? Who decided what was “un-German?” And it wasn’t just books that were condemned. Music, architecture, inventions, paintings, sculptures, and even dress fashions had to conform to a certain German aesthetic. Who wants to live like that? Who wants the government deciding what you can eat, read, think, create?
The Bolsheviks did the same thing after the Russian Revolution of 1917. Anything reminiscent of the previous regime was confiscated, suppressed, burned, destroyed, and labeled “too bourgeois.” The great Russian composer, Rachmaninoff, emigrated to America because his music was condemned by the Communist authorities. The great Russian writer, Boris Pasternak, author of Doctor Zhivago, was censored and suppressed. If his novel had not been smuggled out of Russia, a great piece of literature would have been lost to the world. Doctor Zhivago describes this shameful period in world history.
Chairman Mao did the same thing in China. The Chinese Communist Party is STILL suppressing free speech and writers who speak out against oppression. The CCP STILL controls access to information and the content of that information. American companies like Twitter and Facebook help the CCP censor and control information in China. That’s how they are allowed to do business there.
In the United States, the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment GUARANTEE every American citizen the right of free speech and peaceable assembly to express that free speech. Free speech makes some people uncomfortable. It causes some people to feel threatened. It makes some people close their minds to new ideas. It opens the minds of others. It is divisive, combative, uniting, liberating, threatening, and compromising — all at the same time. Free speech is the basis of CREATIVITY. Free speech is the foundation of FREEDOM. Taking it one step further, FREEDOM is the bedrock on which FREE SPEECH and CREATIVITY stand. If we lose our freedom and submit to totalitarianism, we may as well start looking for another universe to inhabit, because the freedom to CREATE and EXPRESS OURSELVES will be as extinct as the dinosaurs.
(NOTE: violence is not an expression of free speech and is NOT protected by the U.S. Constitution. Devolving into burning, looting, shooting, destroying private and public property, tearing down statues, committing assault and battery, killing police, and threatening people, is just criminal behavior committed by people who have no respect for law and order. These people belong in jail. Furthermore, there is a big difference between exercising free speech and engaging in a two-way debate and just being rude, ill-mannered, and stupid. There was a time when our society valued good manners and intelligent debate.)
(NOTE: Some famous writers banned or partially banned in Nazi Germany: Aldous Huxley, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, C.S. Lewis, Jack London, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann, George Orwell, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, H.G. Wells, and Oscar Wilde.)
Thank you for stopping by!
Dawn Pisturino
January 7, 2022
Copyright 2022 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved.
Many Americans seem to forget that our forefathers, the great men who founded this country, were once Englishmen living under a despotic ruler.
These men knew what they were doing when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. They had learned from personal experience how a greedy and self-serving government can rob citizens of their money and their rights.
The U.S. Constitution was written to protect American citizens from their own government. And yet, year after year, I see American citizens throwing away their freedom and their rights and allowing the federal government to control their lives.
Every time a hard-working American citizen accepts a federal income tax increase without protest, he is throwing away his right to adequately support himself and his family.
Every time an able-bodied American citizen accepts welfare unnecessarily from the federal government, he is throwing away the opportunity to improve his own life through gainful employment and education.
Every time an American citizen refuses to speak up, he is denying his own freedom of speech. Every time an American citizen refuses to vote, he is denying himself the power to choose.
Every time a law-abiding citizen turns in a gun, he is throwing away his legal right to protect himself and his family.
We need to remind ourselves of our own American heritage. There is nothing shameful in honoring our flag, honoring our history, and honoring our heritage of protest and freedom.
This is why our country was founded.
This is also why, after 200 years, we are still free. Our biggest enemy is not found in other countries. It is the ignorance and complacency of our own citizens.
Respect your freedom and protect your rights!
Dawn Pisturino
Published in The Kingman Daily Miner, February 13, 1994.
Copyright 1994-2014 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved.
Dawn Pisturino's Blog 