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To: Sam the Sham
Only a society in which ostracism and disgrace are potent sanctions, only a society where "what the neighbors will say" matters, only a society that in fact would never, ever, regard the use or presence of pornography as acceptable can be libertarian

Nobody is saying you should not have the right to ostracize people for engaging in behavior you do not approve of. Nothing in our society requires you to associate with people whose morals you do not like.

You seem to want to take it to the next level, though: you want to use government power to peer into your neighbors' bedrooms to make sure they aren't watching or reading naughty material.

The more monocultural a society is, the weaker the government it can have because the coercion of law is replaced by the coercion of ostracism to control negative behavior.

Despite whatever myths you may have been taught, America has never had only one culture.

516 posted on 11/27/2004 2:12:48 PM PST by Modernman (Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. --Benjamin Franklin)
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To: Modernman
The more monocultural a society is, the weaker the government it can have because the coercion of law is replaced by the coercion of ostracism to control negative behavior.

Despite whatever myths you may have been taught, America has never had only one culture

Let me explain the word "society" to you. A "society" can be a relatively small number of people. Small town America for most of its history was monocultural. A town basically had one culture. So there were clearly understood cultural rules of right and wrong which if you transgressed, life would be made very uncomfortable for you. Try openning up one of your precious porn bookstores in a Mormon or Bible Belt community and you'll see what I mean.

Ostracism is exercised on the community level or it is meaningless. That is why only a community that is monocultural and ostracizes deviant behavior can be libertarian because it doesn't need government to enforce rules.

And America has never, ever been in the least libertarian about things like drunkeness, Sunday business, or obscenity. So your anarchic model of freedom as unrestrained license is one which the American people have never, ever accepted. Communities, unlike Supreme Court justices, have always been very, very clear about what constituted obscenity and they have always legally proscribed it.

520 posted on 11/27/2004 2:33:52 PM PST by Sam the Sham
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