Dear, Hank and John

Dear,
Hank and John

I owe a huge part of my education to you. John, I knew you were a Christian. I've followed you for a long time. Since the beginning of your career. I watched Mental Floss and Crash Course. I watched the Vlog Brothers. Hank, I love Sci-Show.

How dare they censor your work, John. For obscenity? Your work is beautiful. I don't yet have it on my bookshelf, but it will be on there someday. I promise. Paper Towns will be on my bookshelf. 

You represented something good about the internet. A prevailing curiosity and sharing of valuable information. I could learn everything and anything on the internet. I could unravel the mysteries of the poets. I could find any piece of information, ever, on Google Books. 

I represent freedom of speech. On that hill I die on. You are a fellow Christian in my book. Christ cussed, if you didn't know. He said, "Fox", which was like calling Herod an "Ass". They referred to a certain menstruos cloth in the Prophets, which would be more foul than saying "Shit." It literally says the phrase "Piss'th against the wall" several dozen times in the book of Kings, in English. John Bunyan said "slut." C. S. Lewis said "damn" and even blasphemed a couple times in his earlier works. G. K. Chesterton said a word which I will not repeat, unless I'm placing it in dialogue. It's the only word I ever censored in any of my work. You're in a long line of Christians who used potty language, including God Himself in the Bible.

It's not old. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles offended parent groups, and so they ruined the franchise. Bambi offended the NRA, thus, they tried and failed to sue Disney. Censorship is evil. I don't care if it's Antifa or Black Lives Matter or my very own Christians who do it. The world is being destroyed by censorship.

Can we both agree that full blown pornography---unsimulated sex---and full blown violence---real live killings and assaults---ought to be censored? I find that okay. But, a naughty word? A naughty idea? I see nothing wrong with bleeping out a cussword on live T.V.. Do you? It seems we had this licked in the 90s and 80s. People were free to make whatever they chose, there just was a rule about what you could broadcast with regards to foul words, sex or violence. It couldn't be real. That was the only stipulation. And, rightly, I think it's okay to censor that. I may differ there.

But, a book? Why not have the firemen come and burn people's houses? I hate Nietzsche. But, I've learned the most valuable proof of God's existence by reading him. Without it, I could have never proven God exists, or the reason why we need Him. As, that idea is valuable to me. I disagree with it, just like CRT---but, I ought to listen.

Frankly, I knew censorship was happening on the left---today I'm seeing it on the right. Both wings are crushing the middles and centers. 

Your books are precious to me. As are Nietzsche's and Freud's and Kant's and Byron's and Lichtenstein, and the countless poets who will come after me. So much was possible, and still is. I want to nurture a young black man, to go to Africa and write their epics. I want an African mythology like Ovid. I want an Asian mythology, too. And I want Ovid. The world is getting smaller, and we need to share each other's literatures. Not be offended by them.

G. K. Chesterton said it, and I will too. In the early days it wasn't the church that censored, as they were greedy to copy down everything they could from existing sources predating the fall of Rome. It was what Scholars did, was compile sources, and translate old works of literature. It's how we have Beowulf and Aristotle and Plato and Ovid and the Iliad and Odyssey. I think that's the job of a monk, to find God interwoven throughout all things. As my faith was never hindered by dissent, but I found God in the critiques they laid. In saying "Darius the Mede never existed" I found him. He is Darius I, as Daniel is written out of order. Why? That's an important concept. Because God is not a pedant. And I think we need to know that. And for that, I think we need not censor, nor inhibit genius. But, that is the American way as of late. To inhibit genius, and make it only for a privileged class. Instead of one hundred thousand cobblers whose genius it was to make shoes, there are five companies with a patented design which all shoes are based. A few outliers. But, as was said on a specific TV show, when women who made beautiful jeans wanted to get funding for their project, "That's a saturated market." They were good jeans. And, they worked. But, because there were no jeans able to be made---all of them were Levi and Wrangler---they couldn't make Jeans. Not successfully at least. Understand?