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Brian on porn on Talk Sport I am about to be on Talk Sport Radio, at about 1 am tomorrow morning, they said. I have just done an interview about President Bush’s crackdown on porn, with a guy called Duncan Barkes. I tried to make sense, and probably made some sense. The purpose of this post is to tell you this, not to spend the next three quarters of an hour telling you what I think about it all.
But I will summarise it:
Duncan Barkes: Should porn be illegal?
Me: No.
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“Should porn be illegal?”
Brian, as all Samizdata fans who have familiarised themselves with the ultimate defence of moral relativism can tell you — namely Richard Posner’s masterpiece “The problematics of moral and legal theory” — there is no convincing moral argument for or against the legalisation of pornography.
There are, however, arguments in terms of instrumental reason. If it can be empirically proven that pornography is a contributing factor to the demographic decline of the society in which it is permitted, then one could claim that those who (for whatever reason) subscribe to the value judgement that their society should survive have a very convincing case against legalising pornography.
I subscribe to the value judgment that it’s a good thing for my society to survive, but I’m not quite sure as to the truth of the empirical claim that pornography is socially destructive. At any rate, with my libertarian hat on, I’m all in favour of legalising smut — but with my ‘Western culture must survive’ hat on, I’m for certain restrictions.
I think porn is probably OK for dirty old gentlemen, who’ve completed their reproductive obligations to society — but not for dirty young lads, whom pornography either encourages to fornicate or to concentrate on single-handed sex.
Ban the filthy smut for the under-fifties.
I celebrated my 56th birthday some weeks ago.
What crackdown on porn?
I think porn should be banned because it perpetuates the image that men are merely the toys of men.
…who’ve completed their reproductive obligations to society
Your libertarian hat must be a very small one indeed. What ‘obligation’ is that? Why not just say that you think suitable (i.e. white) members of the (fictional) Volk should be legally required to create more little white people, for the greater good of course.
As for the moral arguments, it is simply a matter of the objective rights of individuals to be individuals and not part of some enforced collective. That there are responsibilities associated with choice does not change the underlying moral nature of not depriving people of choice, which is to say for forming critical prefenences for yourself… which leads to the critical preference for the theory that my reading habits are none of anyone elses damn business.
Feel free to urge people to go out and breed for England, just don’t kid yourself there is any basis for thinking it is an obligation: having children is never an obligation, though I would argue that not having them if you cannot support them is.
Actually I do think white people should create more little white people for the greater good.
Brian,
I love you. Will you have my babies? If not, I’ve always got my hand. Porno, perhaps, but at least it’s sex with someone I love. (Ok, Ok, not original).
Perry — I was sure that the ‘reproductive obligations’ bit would get a rise out of you. Thanks also for including the same argumentum ad Hitlerum Mutterkreuz image you posted some months ago, nice to see it again. Where’s the Kinder, Kirche, Kueche one? Don’t forget it the next time — I’m kinda nostalgic for extracts from your Encyclopedia Naziana.
Still having a problem distinguishing between value judgments and empirical data?
I know, I know. Once again: as Archilocus famously said, the fox knows many things, the hedgehog knows one big thing. Trouble is, if you’re a hedgehog like I assume myself to be, you have to repeat the same old stuff over and over again ad infinitum …
I should charge you for trying to drum this into you.
P.S. You speak of ‘objective rights’? Sounds like the kind of crap they drone on about in ‘Crooked Timber’.
Well just because people resort to the Nazi analogy too fast these days does not mean your views are not riddled with them. Clearly you are coming from the same place in so many ways that I am unlikely to tire of pointing that out anytime soon.
Still trying to work out how George Bush is supposed to be cracking down on pornography. The closes I can get is that Los Angeles County is trying to force porn stars to wear condoms.
S. Weasel
Sorry, I should have been clearer. According to the Talk Sport people, Pres Bush has made a campaign promise to impose such a crackdown. I just took their word for it, and argued the rights and wrongs. But I too have heard nothing else about this.
The problem I have with Cathal’s original post is that it seems as though the concern is more for keeping the society as is, rather than allowing it to evolve and improve. It’s inherently statist, it seems. It seeks to prevent social “trauma” which could ultimately improve society.
I’m a believer in the idea that whatever is good for the individual changes the society for the better.
I’ve not heard of any such campaign promise, though DOJ is supposedly actually attempting to enforce the federal obscenity laws again, after a hiatus during the 90s.
I am not at all sure it’s doing so under the President’s express orders, though. Except as given specific instructions by the Chief Executive or Congress, the Attorney General can prioritise pretty much how he wants, and enforcing the obscenity laws, as much as it may chafe libertarian sensibilities, is entirely in the AG’s character without any help from the President.
Porn should not be illegal. OBscenity laws ought to be dumped. But, as I’m a Hayeckian fan of the Rule of Law, if we’re (the general American we) going to have such laws, they ought to be enforced.
Perhaps, in fact, enforcing them is the only way to get enough people annoyed to push for their removal.
Sigvald’s got it right: The Dept. of Justice is, um, a-coming.
The Middle East is very strict on porn, so is Africa. On the other hand, places like Holland and Sweden are very liberal on porn.
Now tell me, which area is the most civilised, and which is closer to moral bankruptcy and oppression?
Porn clearly goes hand in hand with affluence and civilisation.
Perry writes (referring to me):
“Well just because people resort to the Nazi analogy too fast these days does not mean your views are not riddled with them. Clearly you are coming from the same place in so many ways that I am unlikely to tire of pointing that out anytime soon.”
Three possibilities:
1. Perry is acting the demagogue by playing the Nazi card.
2. Perry sincerely believes that my views are similar to those of the Nazis.
3. I sometimes express myself in a way that would lead naive, uninformed readers to believe that my views are similar to those of the Nazis.
Perhaps it’s a combination of all three — indeed perhaps, after two or three generations of political correctness being funnelled into the heads of the general public, it is almost impossible to express any view of a race realist nature without many readers believing that one is just waiting for the rebirth of Aryan ideology or that one spends one’s weekends dressing up in white sheets and hoods and burning crosses on one’s front lawn.
Or do I have to state, every time I open my mouth on the subject, that I believe the Holocaust was one of the greatest crimes of the Twentieth Century, or that the Nazis simply got their facts wrong when they conjured up the pure Aryan race, or that I support Israel’s immigration policy, or what?
Just for vour information, it was the Nazis who first banned IQ testing (in 1936). Why? Because the German Jews scored a standard deviation higher than German gentiles. And needless to say, the Nazis introduced ‘affirmative action’ for gentiles long before Martin Luther King started propagating it in the United States.
Besides, remember that many reasonable people actually do have views on certain subjects that do coincide with those of the Nazis. Nazi doctors were the first to claim that tobacco smoking can lead to cancer. It can — even if Goebbels and co. said so. Hitler believed that the world is round and not flat. So do I. Etcetera ….
On the porn issue:
Illegal? No.
Restricted? Yes.
We face the problem of completely unrestricted pornography (which I will refrain from labelling as smut because that implies that it always has a negative effect) being detrimental to the naive who become addicted to such things and having an uncontrollable desire to make their fantasies happen in real life. Therefore, I believe that current restrictions are enough (if not too much) if we add the condom requirement, so that the religious nutters don’t take over and use the HIV outbreak as an argument for its banning. My personal beliefs oppose pornography, but that should not limit the rest of society.
On the Nazi issue:
I think that the Nazi card was definitely a necessary play, since the notion of “reproductive requirements” equates to a fascist government controlling our sex lives, which is actually seeping into democratic society unnoticed, as in this case.