The Difference

As much as I'd like not to think about or reference anything written at NRO, this item is probably worth mentioning (via Tbogg who has more of a stomach than me):

Plainly it is not governmental inefficiency these agents are worried about. They find the anti-pornography crowd disturbing because they believe that policing pornography violates fundamental rights. This has become the dominant view in our society: As long as what I do doesn't harm you personally, I have a right to do it.* It's a silly view and a view rejected by law enforcement policies all over the country. Were we to truly recognize such a philosophy, we would have to legalize prostitution, drugs and suicide -- as well as the murder of homeless drifters with no family or friends. After all, if someone kills a homeless drifter, how does that affect anyone else?

Once again, let me remind you that the speaker of this fascist drivel is a conservative. You know, the ones that keep lecturing us about how bad government is and how they're all for less government and want to get the government off our backs, supposedly.

So let's be reminded: modern conservatism is not about less government. It's not about freedom or liberty. It's about the opposite. And the great travesty of the last 25 years of American politics has been the Democratic Party's failure to confront efforts (mostly covert)by Republicans to restrict individual liberties and trample human rights. The nomination of John Roberts and his anti-privacy-right views are the fruit the Democrat's meakness on civil liberties issues has wrought.

And for the record, Democrats should be clear, in fact, that public policy should seek to allow people the freedom to do what they want, behind closed doors, among consenting adults, as they see fit, as long as it doesn't harm anyone else. So Ben's ridiculous analogy of the homeless man doesn't hold water. Utilitarian liberalism protects the homeless man because his life has value. It wouldn't matter if he had no families or friends. Unlike conservatives, liberals believe that each individual life has equal value, regardless of gender, sexual preference, race, income, nationality, or upbringing. And while we're at it, yes, the our drug laws are a violation of individual liberties, too.

But the conservative response to Katrina, among other things, should help us all better understand how conservatives really feel about individuals not of their own kind.

And for the record, the Justice Department's anti-pornography efforts are a waste of time and public resources, a violation of individual liberties, and a shameless pandering to a conservative group of special interests.


*a well known proponent of this utilitarian view, that liberty is the right to do as one pleases as long it doesn't hurt anyone else, was John Stuart Mill, whose book, On Liberty, was "a classic defense of liberty and individual sovereignty" and which as a result earned an honorable mention by the conservative Human Rights Online as one of the 10 most harmful books of the 19th-20th century.

Conservatives hate freedom.