ABSTRACT
Censorship rests on the shoulder of Immanuel Kantian autonomy, referring "to the capacity to be one's own person, to live one's life according to reasons and motives that are taken as one's own and not the product of manipulative or distorting external forces". However, regardless of what one believes to be right, censorship should not be employed if it constrains human autonomy. Expecting the political elites in China, Russia and Saudi Arabia to accept democracy as by-products of economic integration is naive, but by the same token, the argument for why combating censorship should be a foreign policy goal is to be made in the light of the history that brought democracy to life. John Milton stressed that censorship was never a requisite of either Greek or Roman society. That any form of censorship should be imposed on the British Isles was an insult to those qualities that distinguish a free and prosperous society.
