Daily Inspiration Quote by Henry Steele Commager

Censorship, Commager suggests, is the political version of helicopter parenting: it claims to protect the public from corrosive ideas, then quietly ensures the public never learns how to handle ideas at all. The barb in his line is the inversion of the censor's self-image. Censors present themselves as guardians of "discretion" and "standards". Commager argues they manufacture the opposite: a citizenry trained to outsource judgment.

His key move is shifting the debate from content to capability. The real damage of censorship isn't merely that a book is banned or a film is cut; it's that a whole society practices obedience instead of discernment. When authority decides what can be read, said, or seen, individuals stop rehearsing the skills a democratic culture requires: weighing evidence, tolerating ambiguity, recognizing propaganda, distinguishing offense from harm. You don't get mature discretion by removing temptation; you get it by encountering it, arguing about it, and living with the mess.

The subtext is aimed at a recurring American cycle: moral panics that treat the public as both sacred and fragile. Commager, a mid-century historian who watched totalitarian states and Cold War loyalty culture harden the boundaries of permissible speech, is warning that censorship is self-defeating even on its own terms. It doesn't eliminate bad ideas; it infantilizes the audience, leaving them more manipulable, more credulous, and less capable of the very responsibility that censors claim to preserve.