To: Antoninus
Are you serious? You do realize that most pornography was outlawed in this country up through the 1960s, right? Were we some sort of fascist dictatorship until the "enlightened" Supreme Court of the 1960s came a long and "fixed" everything?
I'm old enough to remember that it was still available and still easy to get before the "enlightened" Supreme Court, so please don't try and pretend like it was hard to get when it was "outlawed" because it wasn't hard to get at all.
The problem with your argument is that there has never been anything like the internet, and regardless of the laws on the books, once you go down the road of having the government censor any part of the internet, we're on the road to becoming China or Saudi Arabia.
Because I know, and I think you know as well, that once Americans get used to the idea of having their internet censored by the government, it won't be long before the liberals start passing legislation to protect this or that minority or this or that religion.
You and I would think that's ludicrous, but pump out two generations of Americans who are used to the internet being censored by the government, and stir in the liberals love of trying to ban "hate speech" (speech that disagrees with them), and it's not hard to imagine an internet where you aren't allowed to say bad things about illegal immigrants or Islam or whichever group is the flavor of the month.
When the camel gets his nose in the tent, it's over. Today it's protecting women, children, or morality. Tomorrow it's protecting this minority group or that minority group, next week it's protecting this religion or that religion.
To: af_vet_rr
I'm old enough to remember that it was still available and still easy to get before the "enlightened" Supreme Court, so please don't try and pretend like it was hard to get when it was "outlawed" because it wasn't hard to get at all.
So you are telling me that any 12 year old could access images of two men eating each others feces when you were a kid? Spare me. I was a kid in the 1970s and things have changed completely since then in terms of access to porn. That same 12 year old kid can have thousands of images of the most sickening depravity known to man burned into his brain within 10 minutes.
The problem with your argument is that there has never been anything like the internet, and regardless of the laws on the books, once you go down the road of having the government censor any part of the internet, we're on the road to becoming China or Saudi Arabia.
The internet is no different than any other form of mass media. Obscenity laws that were applied to mass media in the 1940s could easily be applied to the internet.
And I'm sure you know that the slippery slope argument is a fallacy. That's why I'm not using it to demonstrate how the loosening of porn laws will result in even greater cultural devastation for our children and grandchildren.
190 posted on
03/15/2012 1:29:51 PM PDT by
Antoninus
(The less virtuous a people, the greater its need for laws.)
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