Can't Touch This

My children are well-versed on what websites are age appropriate for them. However, one never knows where the accidental keystroke might lead so we installed Net Nanny a few years ago and have found it a very efficient program for blocking the viewing of sexually explicit and pornographic websites.

For a few months, a group in West Bend has been yammering for censorship in West Bend. Mark Peterson at the Motley Cow has been doing a yeoman's job following the faux controversy. The group is led by a local woman, Ginny Maziarka, who in an effort to excise her prurient desires has insisted on the removal of certain books because their contents offend her religious sensibilities.

I'm sorry that's not right anymore. She's upset because the books are pornographic in nature.

That's changed, too? I see, now her mission is to keep libraries safe.

Well, regardless of the continually changing mission of the confused petitioners, I tried to surf to the WISSUP site that Maziarka runs and was amused to discover I was being blocked by Net Nanny because of pornographic content.


This reminded me of something I read many years ago in one of my philosophy courses with Professor Dan Putnam. It seems apropos considering the twisted motives and ever-changing rationale of the censorship group in West Bend.

When the mind's eye rests on objects illuminated by truth and reality, it understands and comprehends them, and functions intelligently; but when it turns to the twilight world of change and decay, it can only form opinions, its vision is confused and its beliefs shifting, and it seems to lack intelligence. (Plato, Republic)