Censorship We Haz that

In the book the Trapp Family Singers (the basis for the movie "The Sound of Music") there is an episode that occurred after the Nazi takeover. The children come home from school and start complaining about the "changes": not just the propaganda, but that Nazi rules censored their ability to sing:

We can't sing Bach anymore, because the songs include the name of Jesus. And we can't sing Mendelssohn either, because he was Jewish, they lament.

Well, Mendelssohn was actually a Christian convert, but ethnically he was Jewish, but you get the idea.

As one grows up, one learns to separate the artist from the art. My mother did not like it when I discovered Wagner ("he's a Nazi") but does that mean he is now banished from concert halls?

And I was annoyed when my sons discovered the Beatles, who I blame for the drug epidemic that destroyed many of my generation. But mom: it's just music, they insist. True. And how many people actually listen to the lyrics of modern music? Shall I ban Puff the Magic Dragon because some people see it as a celbration of marijuana instead of a children's song that talks of an imaginary friend?

So the kerfuffle about some second string football player who refuses to stand for the national anthem because it was written by a slave owner is...how shall I say it? Stupid. (He has now morphed his excuse to well, I hate America, so maybe he will soon become an ordinary left wing propaganda hero, using his "controversial" opinions to keep them from firing him because he can't throw a football. Compare and contrast to Tebow, who was fired for his controversial opinions and who maybe couldn't throw a football but did happen to win a lot of games).

So where do we draw the line?

Do we stop letting our kids watch the Jungle Book because Kipling was an imperialist? Or stop them from reading Tolstoy because his books are full of Christian themes? How about a new censorship of all films that do not agree with the PC crowd. Gone with the Wind? The Wizard of Oz? Every World War II movie that hinted the Japs were evil SOB's (never mind that the Chinese who suffered millions of civilian deaths from Japanese atrocities would agree with you there).

The new Left has the schools and the media to push the theme of how evil was the West, and that religion is the source of all wars and I suspect a lot of SJW believe this.

Ah, but their claims would be laughable to anyone with a knowledge of Asian history would be able to agree.

 Every news article about religion has trolls insisting that religion is evil and the source of all wars, but how many educated people are aware of the 100 million people who were killed by secular communist regimes? not to mention the various genocidal wars in Asian history that make the so called "religious wars" in Europe look like minor skirmishes, from Genghis Khan to Tamerlane to the Samurai invasion of Korea to the many Chinese "civil wars" that no one in the west has ever heard about.

So let's stop our children from singing national anthems written by slaveholders, and stop singing God Bless America while we're at it, since it mentions God.

Freedom of speech? Bah humbug.