Ban Children Now!
Isn’t it clear? Since all of society’s problems seem to involve children, isn’t it the prudent thing to do? Why inflict more difficulty on adults by telling us that certain forms of expression are unacceptable? The drive to ban all smoking started out as an argument that smoke was “bad for the children”. Google is engaged in a fight with the government over search terms, which the government wants so it can prove that children can see naughty images too easily on the internet.
Janet Jackson’s tit caused a stir. Why? The children.
Grand Theft Auto - needs to be banned. Why? The children.
Carded to buy decongestants? Why? The children again.
Outlawing certain types of on-line content. Why? Those damn children again.
It has gotten to the point in our society where the rights of free citizens (read: adults) are being abridged to prevent the potential of some child doing something that may or may not harm them.
Which compels me to ask: what is in greater service to liberty? Is it better to encumber erstwhile free tax-paying, law-abiding citizens with an ever-growing litany of restrictions on adult behaviour that children ought not engage in? Or is liberty for adults better served by removing children from society?
Those of you who see these encroachments on my liberty as a good thing should consider the following things:
I have no children, nor do I plan to. The reason for this is so that my life is not encumbered by the necessary limitations on my artistic consumption and expression that raising a child entails.
By asking the government to craft legislation that puts limits on artistic expression so that you are freed from actually paying attention to your children, you are forcing me to live as though I was raising a child.
Therefore, when I discipline your misbehaving miscreant whelps, I expect you to shut up about it. By forcing me to live my life in a sanitized world, you have implicitly given me the authority to raise your children for you.
If you are uncomfortable with that idea, I suggest you keep your children from impacting my ability to live as a free adult.