[Automatic Nate]

</span><blockquote><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><hr size="1" />Originally Posted by (Impenitent,)
Plato asked the same thing...<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>
I'm not sure it's that simple. The phenomena are similar in form, but the content seems to have changed. I think it would be pertinent to take Freeman's anecdote as part of the question--although I don't have experience as a drug counsellor, I've certainly heard similar things on my visits to young parishoners in juvenille prison. Kids narrate themselves in terms of DMX and Eminem and whose jail sentences bear that out (I wasn't any more involved in youth ministry when 50 Cent entered the scene). I wonder whether we're seeing something different from what Plato was seeing.

Now as a Miltonist I have a deep-seated opposition to censorship, but I do wonder whether we shouldn't take with more seriousness the difference even as we note the common threads. I'm not so sure that the "same sentiment," in any strong sense, is operative here.