Is Censorship Getting in the Way of Our Freedom of Speech?

In America we can say and write basically anything we want too (within the aspects that it is not a threat or intent to do harm to someone.) Not everywhere is like that, for example the most popular country to censor almost everything is China. They go so far to censor everything that their citizens’ are monitored in what they search like with their Google searches.

The following quote is from an article by Brian Leatherman at American University,

“As Americans, we take pride in the fact that we are able to say whatever we want, read whatever we want, and think whatever we want, with few limitations.  When those liberties are stolen from us, government has usually enacted a bill or regulation for the “good” of society.  For example, censorship is used to “protect our youth”, which in turn, deprives us of our freedom of speech; this is also used to limit individualism and the expansion of ideas.  Censorship is a way for government to “protect” society from what the government thinks is inappropriate.  Wherever media is present, censorship will be involved….” (Leatherman)

Cite: http://www.szasz.com/undergraduate/leathermanpaper.htm

Now, the United State does monitors and or censors Google searches but they are for very few Google searches and are just select key word(s) that pop up ‘red flags’ on the database.