The Department of Justice has recently announced a change in its priorities: it will be targeting porn. Not child porn, but porn between consenting adults, particularly over internet distribution.
I hardly know where to begin. First, the First Amendment says that Congress shall make 'no law'. It does not say 'No law except...." It says, "No law." Second, porn's been around, in various permutations, for literally millennia. The drug war should show clearly that government cannot eradicate a market. It can only raise prices and increase its power. But then, when the government is arguing that Prohibition (no, not drug prohibition, but alcohol prohibition, as in 18th Amendment prohibition) was a success, it stands to reason that they would not understand either economics or history.
Last, do we really want DOJ spending its time prosecuting porn? I mean, shouldn't they be going after terrorists or something? There are a number of reasons to oppose what our government is doing in Guantanamo Bay, but very few people would argue that our government's efforts to find out about potential terrorist plots before they happen are impermissible.
For more information about the government's past battles about porn, check out this book (you can read my review here).
Comments