I made mention to this issue in the thread over "A Child-proofed Society," but wondered if enough people might have an opinion to start a new topic around it.
It is my contention that censorship is largely ineffective -- in addition to being unconstitutional -- and unnecessary. I would also contend that it encourages parental negligence and allows Americans to possess a false sense of security about their surroundings, increasing public cries of distress whenever an objectionable word or image makes headlines, in spite of the right to freeom of speech.
I'm not sure how many people saw the film Bowling for Columbine, but I would highly recommend it in connection to this topic. There, Michael Moore examines (however in depth you perceive it to be) the connection between culture and violence. As my memory recalls, we have something close to, or over, 11,000 shootings each year in America. Across the rest of the globe in such extensive industrialized nations as Japan, England, France and Canada the numbers don't reach or exceed 400. The point of the exercise was to show that while nudity and violence are just as prevalent, if not more prevalent, throughout these nations, they aren't nearly as dangerous as a handful of American states.
If showing violence and nudity on television and in video games is a root cause of violence and immorality in America, why aren't other nations with equal or greater exposure to such negative influences enduring the same social conflicts as America?
And this is where my argument comes in that it is in large part due to parental negligence. Rather than truly teach our children, we focus merely on telling them "no," backed with the universal explanation of "because." I feel we would be better served not to censor the media and deal with the questions and issues brought forth by objectionable material. Clearly, parents can not supervise their children every moment of the day, and unless the children have some kind of understanding of controversial issues (such as R-rated movies, smoking, what have you...) they won't truly have any reason to refrain from entertaining them.
Different cultures and "empires" has tried to improve society through disinformation or the suppression of controversial issues. To my knowledge, none of them has succeeded. Our censorship efforts certainly don't seem to be working. In a comparison of prisons throughout the world, we have one of the highest percentages of our countries adults incarcerated. We have the highest occurence of gun violence among citizens of any industrialized nation.
So, my questions (in addition to any additional comments you may have to my argument) are these:
1. Does censorship work?
2. Does censorship contribute to or encourage parental negligence?
3. If you do think censorship works and that it does not contribute to parental negligence, please (I urge you) offer a hypothesis on why there is such a pronounced disparity between America and other industrialized nations.

I'm working on a response to this thread, but just to clarify, are we particularly discussing censorship of media with violent content or are we discussing censorship in general?

Censorship in general, Cyan.

I don't know. I'm a little torn on this issue, because I do feel that viewing to much violent material can desensitize a person to violence, and that goes for adults and children alike. How many times can we view the same footage of the world trade center crashing to the ground without losing that initial sense of shock and distress?

At the same time, I don't think that hiding things from people helps either. As you said, it creates a false sense of reality, but hollywood has a tendency to create a false sense of reality even when it isn't being censored.

Adults have (or they should have) the tools to deal with these issues and make the separation between reality and fantasy, but children don't necessarily have those tools, and it's up to the parents to provide them and answer any questions that may arise. I also think that if a parent feels that censorship is the answer than they should have that right, but they should be doing the censoring themselves. Rating systems are great for that, and I think that they need to make a clear distinction in the ratings between violence and sexuality, because frankly, if I had children, I would much rather they be exposed to sexuality than violence, because sexuality is natural, and I think it merely warrants an explanation. Other parents may not feel the same, and they should be able to make their own educated decisions.

I agree with cyan here. We should not leave it up to the government to decide what to censor and what not to censor. For example, I do not let my son play violent video games or watch violent shows or cartoons(he likes scooby doo, clifford, and Mr Rogers anyway). As he grows older I will expose him to more, especially when he is able to discuss the things he is seeing,reading, or hearing.