Freedom of Speech in danger?

As an adolescent I was an avid reader of books warning about the threat of loss of our precious freedoms. Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Atlas Shrugged and Animal Farm are ones that I remember especially well.

This summer the release a well-reviewed novel (already chosen for the book-of-the-month) by a first author on an important topic was stopped by a small religious minority in the U.S. I don’t know what is more frightening:

1. That a small religious minority in the US was able to strike fear in a publisher and then the author, or
2. That the US press gave the censorship such little notice.

Here is the bland announcement from the cowardly publisher:

http://www.randomhouse.com/rhpg/medinaletter.html

“This is the way the way the world ends               

Not with a bang but a whimper.”