On cultural issues, the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh is interesting. But when it comes to solving those same cultural issues, he is usually off the mark.
In the past, Walsh called for the government to regulate pornography. He reiterated those calls by demanding the government to start fighting hardcore pornography.
He writes:
“But this is not a conversation most people want to have. Of course, you’d expect those on the political Left to resist any effort to restrict or ban porn. After all, that’s the side that generally supports explicit sex education for children, child drag queens, trans kids, and so on. They are committed to exposing children to all manner of sexual confusion and degeneracy at increasingly younger and younger ages. The real shame is that many on the Right are just as likely to valiantly stand up for the rights of internet pimps and smut peddlers. Any talk of porn restriction is waved off with slogans about “limited government” and declarations about the ineffectiveness of prohibition.”
Yikes. So, he sets up his point by equating advocates of free speech and limited government to those on the left who are sexualizing children. How disingenuous.
Walsh continues:
“This is reason enough for, at a minimum, much heavier regulation on internet porn. It’s true that sex trafficking and child porn are both illegal already, but legal porn provides a platform for both. It’s impossible to sufficiently fight trafficking and child porn without heavier regulations on the types of porn that allegedly involve neither. But even if this significant concern could be put to the side, the case for regulating or banning porn would remain. That’s because porn — even consensual, adult porn — harms children.
On average, children are first exposed to hardcore porn at the age of 11, if not sooner. This exposure is not neutral in its impact. Children are damaged in quantifiable ways, affecting their emotional and psychological development, their attitude towards themselves and others, their behavior, and their ability to form healthy sexual relationships in the future. Porn even produces neurological changes in the brain. Is there not, at minimum, a reason to consider involving the state in this assault on our children’s minds and bodies?”
First, there are already laws on the books for sex trafficking and child pornography.
Second, if children are exposed to hardcore porn at the age of 11, then the onus is on the parents. Why are parents even giving the opportunity for a pre-teen to access such damaging content? Parents need to parent, not defer this responsibility to the government.
Third, on Twitter, he said that if you think porn is speech, then anything can be considered speech. But isn’t it speech? If you watch a motion picture, read a book, or listen to music, that is speech being practiced by an individual or a group of people who are voluntarily coming together without approval from the state.
Social conservatives are just as bad as the pearl-clutching progressives who want to regulate every iota of our lives.
Walsh is a good guy, but it is concerning when he advocates wielding the government club for things he disagrees with.
In 2001, Attorney General Ashcroft planned a major crackdown on porn, especially internet porn, FBI and other justice department personnel and resources were taken from other areas and devoted to his big porn crackdown scheduled for October 1, 2001. (That is why there was no one to get a warrant to search the 20th hijacker’s computer that was seized in July 2001, and later was found to show planning for 9-11).
After 9-11-2001 Attorney General Ashcroft still wanted to use resources for a crackdown on porn, even though the Taliban’s censorship of music and any exposure of women’s bodies was in the news and almost everyone thought that FBI and other justice department personnel and resources should be devoted mainly to terrorism. Bush rejected Ashcroft’s request and the major crackdown on porn was abandoned.