Anything else you'd like to see returned to the way it was for most of the history of our country?
Posted on 04/01/2006 5:37:42 PM PST by Panerai
The industry's VIPs mingle at political galas and Super Bowl parties. Their product is available on cell phones, podcasts, and particularly the Internet _ there it's an attraction like no other, patronized by tens of millions of Americans.
It's pornography. And if you're a consumer, John Harmer thinks you're damaging your brain.
Harmer is part of a cadre of anti-porn activists seeking new tactics to fight an unprecedented deluge of porn which they see as wrecking countless marriages and warping human sexuality. They are urging federal prosecutors to pursue more obscenity cases and raising funds for high-tech brain research that they hope will fuel lawsuits against porn magnates.
"We don't think it's a lost cause," said Harmer, a Utah-based auto executive and former politician who's been fighting porn for 40 years.
"It's the most profitable industry in the world," he said. "But I'm convinced we'll demonstrate in the not-too-distant future the actual physical harm that pornography causes and hold them financially accountable. That could be the straw that breaks their back."
The activists' adversary is a sprawling industry that, by some counts, offers more than 4 million porn sites on the Internet, that in the United States alone is estimated to be worth $12 billion a year. A tracking firm, comScore Media Metrix, says about 40 percent of Internet users in the United States visit adult sites each month.
Porn products are featured at popular sex expositions and retail chains such as Hustler Hollywood. Major hotels provide in-room porn, and adult film stars are now mainstream celebrities. Mary Carey attended a VIP Republican fundraiser in Washington in mid-March; Jenna Jameson's "How to Make Love Like a Porn Star" hit the best-seller lists and she hosted a racy pre-Super Bowl party in Detroit in February.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
OK, that's one Deadly Sin (pride) down; six more to go....
Kind of like politics.
You're confusing "conviction" with "pride". According to your definition, anyone who isn't wishy washy is proud.
Nonsense. Any normal male is going to have a certain amount of testosterone surge while firing a gun, even if it's just range practice. For some people, it goes to the point of turning them into testosterone-poisoned idiots who swagger and give responsible gun owners a bad name.
(I do not presume to speak for women, but I suspect that there's a corresponding effect for them.)
Here, you've touched upon an underlying reason why the Big Government "Conservatives" are antsy. They sense on some level the uncomfortable similarities between themselves and the current enemy of civilization, and fear that they will end up banished from polite society in much the same way genteel anti-Semitism was banished from polite society in the wake of the war to destroy Naziism.
You claim the "liberty" of having kids and not doing the job of raising them?
That "liberty" must be in one of the fainter emanations from one of the most obscure penumbrae, hidden even from the piercing gaze of the Supreme Court....
whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire
No, you don't. You've confused a "republic" with a "democracy" (admittedly, a common error).
I'm also concerned about the more vile forms of pornography that involve the actual abuse and torture of those performing in it.
Insofar as abuse and torture are already illegal, I don't see what you're getting at.
I don't have a lot of use for abstract discussions of "liberty".
Well, then, there's just no frame of reference for you to advance any argument about politics in a free republic, any more than someone who has no use for abstract discussions of "points" or "lines" has any frame of reference for discussing Euclid's Elements.
Few people are willing to accept the full implications of libertarianism for a variety of reasons that probably wouldn't be fruitful to discuss here.
The overwhelming reason for rejection of libertarian ideas can be summed up as: "WAAAA! I won't get any more free stuff from the guvmint!" This indicates a flaw in human nature, not in the ideas. (The general principle that public policy should be guided by human nature rather than ideology does not really apply here, since catering to human nature in this regard leads to economic ruin.)
The reason I don't find this argument particularly persuasive is that I don't expect the preacher banners to ever get the numbers necessary to do it. If society ever shifted in that direction, I wouldn't see the problem in terms of liberty.
See above re confusion between "republic" and "democracy".
By this reasoning, the solution to the current kerfluffle in France is to outright prohibit firings of employees for any reason, reduce the workweek even further, etc.
If anything, that real rate of sexual assault has declined more than the statistics indicate. The view that (for example) a rape victim is "damaged goods" was clearly far more prevalent in 1956 than in 2006.
Sure you have. It's right there in Msg#173.
So, you admit that you (literally) don't know what you're talking about?
Anything else you'd like to see returned to the way it was for most of the history of our country?
Do you think abortion should be legal??
Might you mean this passage from that tome, perhaps?
The Second Amendment states somewhat ambiguously: "A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The first part of the Amendment supports proponents of gun control by seeming to make the possession of firearms contingent upon being a member of a state-regulated militia. The next part is cited by opponents of gun control as a guarantee of the individual's right to possess such weapons, since he can always be called to militia service. The Supreme Court has consistently ruled that there is no individual right to own a firearm. The Second Amendment was designed to allow states to defend themselves against a possible tyrannical national government. Now that the federal government has stealth bombers and nuclear weapons, it is hard to imagine what people would need to keep in the garage to serve that purpose.Yep -- sounds like a guy whose opinions FReepers ought to respect. [ /SARCASM ]
No, I'm claiming that if having to properly raise my kids requires me to avoid public spaces that it restricts my liberty to enjoy public spaces just as much as a fence would.
That "liberty" must be in one of the fainter emanations from one of the most obscure penumbrae, hidden even from the piercing gaze of the Supreme Court....
That's OK. People have trouble finding the right to the free practice of one's religion, even though that one is clearly spelled out in several spots in the Constitution.
Similar to sex, in other words.
Excuse me for not spending three paragraphs expounding on the way in which the will of the voter can be translated, through representation, into law. I figured the average Freeper was smart enough to fill that in for themself.
Insofar as abuse and torture are already illegal, I don't see what you're getting at.
Do you think possession of pictures of abuse and torture should be illegal on the same grounds that child pornography is illegal -- that possessing such pictures encourages the illegal behavior used to produce them and further victimizes those depicted in the images?
Well, then, there's just no frame of reference for you to advance any argument about politics in a free republic, any more than someone who has no use for abstract discussions of "points" or "lines" has any frame of reference for discussing Euclid's Elements.
It's very easy to have a discussion about politics in a free republic. It's called discussing the benefits and costs of the ideas. If you can't think of any good that comes from widespread liberty, then I think your political views are a house of cards built on sand. And waxing poetic about the wonders of liberty isn't going to persuade someone who has more pressing concerns such as eating or even those for whom liberty is a liability to their quality of life.
Freedom and liberty are not magical fairy dust that make everything better. Even the Founders and libertarians acknowledge that freedom and liberty must be limited in the form of property rights and prohibitions on hurting others against their will. Unfettered liberty is a disaster for the same reason unfettered democracy is. If you can't trust the mob to do the right thing if given a direct majority vote, how can you expect the mob to do the right thing if given unfettered liberty? And don't make the liberal mistake of assuming that laws enforce themselves. People enforce laws and corrupt people enforce laws badly.
The overwhelming reason for rejection of libertarian ideas can be summed up as: "WAAAA! I won't get any more free stuff from the guvmint!"
My reason for rejecting libertarian ideas is that in almost any analysis, they'd make my life more unpleasant. It has nothing to do with any benefits I get from the government. In fact, when I worked for state government and was receiving direct benefits from big government, I voted for the Republicans that cut taxes and cost me my job (and have no regrets for doing that). So I've put my ideological money where my mouth is, thank you very much.
I'm still amazed the the absurdity of libertarians who complain about ordinances passed by local government yet wink at far more draconian ordinances passed by homeowner associations, which leads me to wonder if liberty is even their primary concern, since they are so willing to let people surrender it with a signature.
This indicates a flaw in human nature, not in the ideas.
The ideas are flawwed and the hard core libertarians ask for things that nobody wants, including the abolition of public property, abolition of the FDA, and replacement of most criminal laws with civil laws. Yeah, I really want to live in a country where I have to pay tolls or negotiate right of way rights to drive anywhere, get a medical degree to understand if the drugs I'm taking are safe or not, and sue my neighbors in civil court if they play their radio too loudly at 2AM. Why wouldn't everyone? And before you dismiss those people as warping libertarian ideology, they really aren't. They are the purists who understand the full implication of the ideals.
You might enjoy Larry Niven's short story The Cloak of Anarchy, which he says he wrote to explain why he isn't a libertarian.
(The general principle that public policy should be guided by human nature rather than ideology does not really apply here, since catering to human nature in this regard leads to economic ruin.)
The truth is that no pure ideological system is perfect, which is why we inevitably wind up with compromises between competing ideologies. As things shift too far in any one direction, the weaknesses of that ideology become more obvious and people push back in the other direction, until the flaws in the other direction become too obvious, and so forth. Utopia means "nowhere" for a reason.
See above re confusion between "republic" and "democracy".
What's the purpose of letting voters vote if you think it has no impact on government policy?
You're right, Reagan was an A--hole for even nominating him.
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