Dwarkesh Patel

The Catholic world developed it in order to fight Protestantism.

And there's a

There's a lot of support for creating censorship in England at the time because there's anxiety about papists plotting against our nice non-Catholic country trying to undermine it.

There's a general feeling of anxiety, but also there's deliberate moral panic.

Right.

Whipped up by politicians and power seeking people who whip up a deliberate moral panic about books the same way in 1954 there was a moral panic about comic books or the same way there was a moral panic about Dungeons and Dragons in the 90s.

Right.

There's a moral panic about scary and dangerous books and pamphlets.

And so there's a movement to create state censorship for the first systematic time in England.

And Milton writes this big treatise about why freedom of the press is important, the Aeropagitica, beautifully written rhetorical piece that presents the importance of freedom.

You know, we must trust truth to rise purely to the top.

We must let free voices move.

Otherwise, you're going to create a situation where people are writing for the censor first and for the public second.

It will sort of constrain people's thought in the way that we know chilling effects and fear do.

It's a beautiful treatise.

He fails.

The censorship regime passes.

Paradise Lost is published under this censorious regime.

It goes through this censorship regime.

The one line they tell him to change is about astrology.