Neil Gaiman writes "Why defend freedom of icky speech?"

[Igel]

7. Had she stayed in Russia and written what she did

she probably would have.

Many did.

Others did as they were told. The father of one of my dissertation committee members obeyed and was mediocre at what the politicians said he had to write. He knew he was betraying his "muse". He finally drank himself to death.

My dissertation advisor was a faculty member in Russia and what he worked on was denounced as bourgeois. He was given an option: He could renounce his field and report on other faculty members or he could go into internal exile. He considered himself lucky to simply escape with exile to a 3rd tier school in a backwater. He was sent to a university in Estonia.


As for censorship, there's a proverb: The law isn't written for the righteous. The only reason you need laws that are based in morality (as opposed to things like "don't run red lights," a purely logistical issue) is to provide guidance and allow punishment of people who are morally ill-formed. This might be those whose brains have some chemical imbalance because of developmental flaws or some sort of toxic chemical or those who have been abused.

"Laws without morals are in vain."