Friday, March 8, 2013

"Why Can't We Be More Like Europe?"

That's the perpetual progressive whine.  Here's a fascinating account of where Europe is headed from the March 8, 2013 U.K. Telegraph:
Controversy has erupted over next Tuesday's European Parliament resolution "on eliminating gender stereotypes in the EU", meant to mark international women's day, after libertarian Swedish MEPs from the Pirate Party spotted the call for a ban in the small print.
While not legally binding, the vote could be the first step towards European legislation as the EU's assembly increasingly flexes its political muscle within Europe's institutions.
The proposal "calls on the EU and its member states to take concrete action on discrimination against women in advertising... [with] a ban on all forms of pornography in the media".
Kartika Liotard, a Dutch left-wing feminist MEP, is seeking "statutory measures to prevent any form of pornography in the media and in advertising and for a ban on advertising for pornographic products and sex tourism", including measures in the "digital field".
The MEPs are also demanding the establishment of state sex censors with "a mandate to impose effective sanctions on companies and individuals promoting the sexualisation of girls".
I think the U.S. Supreme Court made a major mistake when it gutted obscenity laws in Memoirs v. Massachusetts (1966), and only undid some of the damage with Miller v. California (1973).  But it is pretty clear that progressives in Europe are going to take us back to the days of censorship of obscenity, and their American counterparts should stop being so hostile to social conservatives because it appears that censorship really is a progressive value.

4 comments:

  1. As someone in the Meese Commission on porn supposedly have said, He knows what obscenity when he sees it.

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  2. You are thinking Justice Stewart Potter: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that." http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0378_0184_ZC1.html

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  3. Because all of Europe is progressive. And every progressive wants to turn the US into Europe. And now we learn, not only are liberals fascists, they're also censors. (Let's not mention Santorum here.)

    Meanwhile in Canada, the lead neo-conservative finds nothing wrong with child pornography. Screw the children.

    What an upside down world we live in, especially according to fact-free CC.

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  4. Seriously: don't you hear progressives frequently complain about how far behind we are from Europe on social policy? Health insurance; gay marriage; acceptance of "alternative lifestyles"? I am sick of hearing it.

    And yes, progressive thought has much in common with fascism, especially the worship of governmental power.

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