I'm not a firm believer that there is only one "true" reality. Every one of us sees the world through glasses colored by the sum total of our past experiences within the limits of our innate ability, both physical and mental. We like to simplify the human experience by believing that there really is One True nature of things that are. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't.

What I do know is that when you limit your experience of reality passively or by active choice, you should at least admit that what you have chosen is your own variant and not necessarily the same as that of others. Censorship is an artificial and active limiter on what we are allowed to experience as reality. It's a tool which can only be wielded by those who presume to know better. It is a tool to soothe and placate, to restrain and control, to make people docile and manageable.

Follow up:

Most things are censored to some degree: your television and radio, the books you read, the things you are taught in school. But there is a difference between benign censorship and constraining your ability to experience the world around you.

"We train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene!" - Colonel Kurtz, Apocalypse Now 1979.

That might seem silly in today's world, a world where one man with a bomb can blow up an embassy, a disco, an airplane. We censor words and 'obscenity' because it gives us the illusion that we maintain civilization in the face of animal brutality from within ourselves. I could make an argument that maintaining this illusion is vitally important and I would cite studies that show just one broken window in a neighborhood results in an increase in crime. Most of us acquiesce or voluntarily agree to minor censorships. We limit the range of our vocabulary when in public. We roll our eyes when the broadcast networks bleep out some offense. We keep our clothes on at the grocery store and try not to grope each other in restaurants. But I'm not talking about benign censorship here, I'm talking about reality changing wool and eyes that can't see.

Let's imagine for just a minute that someone who knows better than us decided that man never landed on the Moon or the Sun actually rotates around the Earth because knowing these things would weaken their own base of political power. I'm not using these examples idly. Most of us have no experential proof that there is any truth to them at all. If we were told often enough that they were false, then, false they would be for all intents and purposes.

If they are, in fact, true - man landed on the Moon and the Earth does rotate around the Sun, is it right for someone to keep this from us for their sole benefit? No, it's just as wrong as keeping your 12 year old son or daughter locked in a closet because you think it's the only way to protect them from evil. Good exists because evil does as well, you can't stop one by pretending. To truly be good, you must also know evil, because without it, you are just left wandering aimlessly in the grey fog of either innocence or ignorance.

Censorship prevents people from experiencing the fullness of themselves. It artificially limits them from being able to be as good or as evil as they might be. It swaddles them in neutral shrouds, saves them from making their own choices and judgements. It gives them crutches to walk on with legs that would otherwise be sturdy and strong. It is a strong-arm tactic used by the weak and insecure.

Tolerating censorship is endorsing ignorance. Strength lies in truth.