Free speech rots from the inside out. (Beat the Press).

There's a TV commercial currently running in Washington, D.C. and, for all I know, nationally. It features a bunch of young hipsters using everyday trash as musical instruments. "Never throw away anything you can use to express yourself!" says the voiceover. That pretty well sums up the state of today's culture.

This fetishization of free expression also shows up in the white-knuckled phobia of censorship that has permeated our media and institutions. From the American Library Association's insistence that every branch library must allow unfettered access to Internet pornography, to the propagandistic "Read a Banned Book" T-shirts sold by activists, to the ponderous newspaper editorials which butcher Martin Niemoeller's "first they came for the Jews" warning every time a museum is criticized for another dung-and-urine desecration of the Virgin Mary, America has convinced itself that we are a hair's breadth away from Fahrenheit 451. Among elites, unfettered self-expression is the highest good, and even the most innocuous forms of censorship are presented as evil by definition.

It's understandable that people in the First Amendment business would be protective of their franchise. And, yes, free expression is good and nice and important. But, the entire culture, particularly the media, has been brainwashed to believe that censorship is always and everywhere a threat to our very freedom. When I tell college audiences that I favor censorship, the gasps of shock from liberal and conservative students alike nearly suck in the walls and pull the ceiling down.

I ask these kids "Do you think ABC should be allowed to run triple-X porn on Saturday morning?" Well, if you say no, then you believe in censorship. Similarly if you think strip clubs can be zoned, kiddie-porn banned, and copyright laws enforced, you support censorship. (Copyright laws are one of the oldest forms of censorship: They bar people from disseminating someone else's work without permission. Try to release a movie starring Mickey Mouse or Snoopy and you'll see how quickly a court orders you to stop.) And, once we establish that you support some censorship, the question isn't whether you are for or against it, but how much censorship you want and where you want it.

The fact is that the Founding Fathers were not ...