Slashdot Mirror
Pentagon Aims To Buy Up Book
jamie writes "Operation Dark Heart, a book about the adventures and frustrations of an Army officer who served in Afghanistan, has ruffled some feathers at the Pentagon. From the article: 'The Defense Department is attempting to buy the entire first printing — 10,000 copies — of a memoir by a controversial former Defense Intelligence Agency officer so that the book can be destroyed, according to military and other sources."
Wait, you mean that asking an author to not print something, getting that author's agreement, and then paying for the printing cost of books that had the material the author agreed to remove is censorship?
The publisher and the author are under no legal requirement to furnish the first run of this book to the Pentagon. They are doing so voluntarily. How is this censorship?!?
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
It is not up to you to decide what is sensitive or classified, and kept a secret from not only the public at large, but compartmentalized and kept a secret from any persons without a need to know.
We have an elected panel of citizens who represent you and have the power to declassify things. Go talk to them.
Oh, to have mod points - well put.
The problem with FDR wasn't so much that he was the first to stray into activities that weren't fully supported in the constitution, it's that he was one of the first to do it a way that aimed to help people instead of controlling them.
The Ayn Rand types just hate that - they want the freedom to be the ones in charge of everything.