Bradbury's America

American Thinker ^ | 3/24/2012 | Malcolm Unwell

[WPaCon]

In Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, the firemen's sole job it is to burn books. Not just contraband books, but all books. Today, we have our own firemen to metaphorically burn speech, massive flamethrowers in tow. Anything that might disrupt us from our politically correct stupor sets off the alarm in the firehouse.

Beatty explains, in Fahrenheit 451, one root cause of the mass censorship to which they have been accustomed: "You must understand that our civilization is so vast that we can't have our minorities upset and stirred. What do we want in this country above all? People want to be happy, isn't that right?" (63). Consider this was originally published in 1951.

Our firemen have been called on Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan. They are not in uniform, but they are all uniform. However, they have lost control; miraculously, these commentators have survived, thanks to a persistent resistance to the oligarch-like powers by a vast underground of dissidents, also known as Rush's and Buchanan's fans and followers.

[null and void]

ping...

[stephenjohnbanker]

Strong similarities between Bradbury’s book, and current
banning of free speech, by the left. They don’t burn books yet, they just refuse to publish the truth anymore.

[Vince Ferrer]

Ray Bradbury was well ahead of his time and spot on with many things. Books don’t need to be burned these days, which makes it easier and more sinister. All we need to do is edit the internet and things dissappear.

[Little Bill]

When I was in Viet Nam we used to receive book care packages from the Red Cross?. I used to take as many of the Science Fiction ones as I could hump to kill the dead hours, you know wait, wait, and then wait again. A very strong Conservative bent in many of the authors, it stuck.

[geologist]

There were people memorizing whole chapters of books, The Holy Bible, Shakespeare, classics, etc. What if suddenly all our electronic medias disappeared?

Pray God will have mercy on America, and forgive our wayward, ways and trespasses, bless us Father, for we repent of our trespasses. in Jesus name, amen.

[geologist]

There were people memorizing whole chapters of books, The Holy Bible, Shakespeare, classics, etc. What if suddenly all our electronic medias disappeared?

Pray God will have mercy on America, and forgive our wayward, ways and trespasses, bless us Father, for we repent of our trespasses. in Jesus name, amen.

[gogogodzilla]

PINGPINGPINGPING!!!!

This can’t be said enough!

My only beef with the article is that America has never been a homogeneous culture. Even in our colonial times, the Puritans and the Georgia penal colony were as far apart, culturally, as you could get...

[azcap]

451 is now always associated with censorship and the police state, but Bradbury gave a great interview, that was included in the some of the anniversary edition paperbacks later on, where he explained that his primary message when he wrote the book was about how our obsession with television was destroying literacy. The police state destroying books came about because the society was so far past literacy and into electronic media that they considered literacy abhorrent.

[tet68]

Remember, they had wall size video screens that
were interactive...

[tbw2]

Online digital publishing saves the hassle of burning books. Just edit all the websites (like Wikipedia does to adapt to the PC reality) and update everyone’s files.

[stephenjohnbanker]

YEP