State Censorship Objectifies the Human Mind.
I wrote this in response to an invitation to sign a petition to request government censorship of pornography.
I am 100% opposed to pornography. I am also 100% opposed to state censorship. If people are forced to choose the right we are no longer moral agents, no longer things that act but things to be acted upon and we can make no progress in developing our moral character through freely choosing the good over the evil.
No individual person has the right to make decisions like this for another. When you ask the state to do it for you, you are neither exercising nor delegating a right, you are simply resorting to brute force and asking the state to wield that force on your behalf against others who think differently. By advocating the initiation of force you the aggressor, the perpetrator of a crime against these others.
You perpetuate a war that has been going on for a very long time, between liberty and slavery. Even if the slavery is to what you consider the good, it is still slavery and slavery is always wrong.
I consider the advocates of this petition to be the same as had they shown up at my door with a gun to decide for themselves what liberty I was permitted to exercise with respect to my property. I recognize the right of all persons to defend their lives, liberty and property and to use force to do so.
That is the level to which you who support this petition descend. You are seeking to use force against those who have decided to treat as children, incapable of making decisions for themselves. In your pride you have established yourselves as their moral superiors and seek to strip them of their moral agency.
You have admitted that your beliefs lack the power to persuade and thus you give up persuasion and resort to force. This is intellectual laziness as the case against choosing to view pornography is persuasive and ought to be made, to free individuals, not to political tyrants.
Pornography objectifies people. What do you think your attack on their moral agency does? You are every bit as guilty as the pornographers of the very same thing. Where their is no moral choice, their is no moral development.