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Modern-day Tocqueville student James Poulos on the Pink police state: I worry, and I think we should all worry, about the way cultural libertarianism is snowballing while the snowball of political libertarianism rolls deeper into hell. I'm aghast at the shrug with which many self-styled libertarians greet massive government, so long as it's run by people with 'enlightened' attitudes about pleasure-seeking. It's not death to the state these libertarians want, it's the state as cool parent, with a stripper pole in every pot...

On top of this, we all know how intimately sex -- or at least images of sex and talk about sex, alas -- has become a part of everyday life. What gives me fear is the idea, which large numbers of people seem to be buying into, that a growing sphere of libertinistic freedoms compensates (or more than compensates!) for our shrinking spheres of political liberty and the practice of citizenship...

So citizens of a Pink Police State (I should say subjects) are apt to surrender more and more political liberty in exchange for more and more cultural or 'personal' license. And the government of a Pink Police State tends to monopolize and totalize administrative control while carving out a permissive playpen for the people.