Barnsey Bill asked me (in a round about way) on the Boobs on Bikes post how to explain why the parade was wrong and how to explain it to his kids. With the huge preamble on how much an atheist he is, I've taken to time to find a non-religious explanation of the dangers of pornography. So, I've found a real, eye-opening article that connects pornography with the destruction of democracy and doesn't invoke anything religious.
In the meantime, now that I have everyone's attention, let me just say how fitting that John Key's speech on the Government's Electoral Finance Bill and the Boobs on Bikes parade occurred on the same day. It's like a divine coincidence.
John Key talked today on how dangerous for democracy the bill is. Yet, how on earth did NZ get to the point where we voted in a Government that would even contemplate such a crack-down on free speech as the Electoral Finance Bill?
It's because moral restraints in NZ have just about completely fallen away. The Boobs on Bikes parade being able to occur in public is a symptom of a far greater problem in NZ.
Robert Reilly explains how pornography, rather than being the sign of freedom some claim it is, threatens both our freedom and our civilization....
In the meantime, now that I have everyone's attention, let me just say how fitting that John Key's speech on the Government's Electoral Finance Bill and the Boobs on Bikes parade occurred on the same day. It's like a divine coincidence.
John Key talked today on how dangerous for democracy the bill is. Yet, how on earth did NZ get to the point where we voted in a Government that would even contemplate such a crack-down on free speech as the Electoral Finance Bill?
It's because moral restraints in NZ have just about completely fallen away. The Boobs on Bikes parade being able to occur in public is a symptom of a far greater problem in NZ.
[...] the key to democracy is not free choice. As we know from the Weimar Republic, people can freely choose anything, even Hitler. The key, as our Founding Fathers knew, is virtue. Only a virtuous person is capable of rational consent because only a virtuous person's reason is unclouded by the habitual rationalizations of vice. Vice inevitably infects the faculty of judgment. No matter how democratic their institutions, morally enervated people cannot be free. And people who are enslaved to their passions inevitably become slaves to tyrants. Thus, our Founders predicated the success of democracy in America upon the virtue of the American people.Related Link: The Politics of Porn
Robert Reilly explains how pornography, rather than being the sign of freedom some claim it is, threatens both our freedom and our civilization....