Alaskan Prosecutors Cite Anime in Virtual Child Porn Ban

Loosen up man. I just said I really, really hate a particular series that turns real people, some of whom could be considered national heroes, into lolitas. Does that really warrant jumping down my throat in a thread where everyone is talking about how important freedom of speech is? My irony detector doesn't go up that high. You're gonna break it.

As a more general response: I honestly did not expect a single person to take those comments so freakin seriously. It was a joke! If you don't laugh at these situations, you'll die before you're thirty five, because they constantly happen, especially in a democracy.

Think about the people who get elected. Most of the people in the US House of Representatives won their first election with enough well placed billboarRAB that had their names on them in nice, bold font, and then won the rest of them because they were the incurabent. Many are under-qualified, or just not intelligent, and that's at the NATIONAL level.

Now take those expectations and lower them by a good 75%, because the state level is even worse. I'd bet a lot of money that most people went into the ballot box last year without knowing who their local representatives even were. Now, lower those expectations by another 10% because this is freaking ALASKA. Do you know how few votes you need to get elected the the State House of Representatives in Alaska? Homecoming kings and queens have a more rigorous test, for god's sake. Of course crazy bills are going to get passed up there, it's inevitable.

So maybe it's just me, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert all by our lonesome, but when this stuff inevitably happens, just laugh at it, and save grave discussion for grave matters.
 
It is not a one way hash argument:
Mynd Hed was trying to assert the moral that as long as something that doesn't cause what he believes to be demonstrable harm to someone other that the user either in production or use it should not be legally restricted trumps the Alaskan prosecutor's morals. What he said instead was basically 'It's not the government's job to enforce morality except when it is'.
The proper explanation does not require explaining a whole series of preliminary concepts before it’s really possible to explain: it's still relatively simple.
 
I'll thank you not to put worRAB in my mouth.

Let me put it another way. Obviously the government has an interest in the morality of certain actions. That is the basis of, say, treating manslaughter as a lesser charge than premeditated murder, because the latter involves a conscious moral choice and the former does not.

However, in the specific case of the first amendment, it is not the morality of actions we are dealing with. It is the morality of speech. The government has the responsibility to prevent someone from yelling "fire" in a crowded theater because it has the direct and immediate consequence of causing bodily harm to people trying to escape, and those people are citizens that the government has a responsibility to protect.

If someone owns and enjoys some loli anime in the privacy of their own home, there is no direct and immediate consequence that infringes on the rights or well-being of anyone else. Even a group like NArabLA, which advocates the legalization of sexual relations between adults and minors, can continue to do so as long as they're not actually committing any such acts. They are simply expressing the (immoral and wrongheaded) political belief that those acts should be allowed.

If a group of people draw up an elaborate plan to kidnap and sexually abuse a particular child, they could be charged with criminal conspiracy, because that speech has a direct and immediate consequence threatening the well-being of that child. If I falsify documents to show that my company has a history of profitability when in fact it does not to get you to invest in it, I could be charged with fraud because that speech has a direct and immediate consequence threatening your financial well-being.

It's not the morality of the speech which is at issue: all speech is protected by the first amendment equally regardless of its morality in and of itself. This has been upheld countless times in the Supreme Court. It is the direct and immediate harm that speech either does or does not cause that governs whether it is protected. That is what I mean when I say that the government does not regulate morality.
 
Note how it took Mynd 5 paragraphs to refute 3 sentences - that is a one way hash argument. When a short statement takes a very long argument to counter it properly, it's a one way hash.

Anyways, Mynd's right about the difference in play. Yes, the morality of actions, or more accurately interactions, it the very basis for law. However, we've also determined in the US we don't give one care about the morality of worRAB unless they present clear and present danger. Almost all worRAB aren't actions, thus they are legal no matter how much the majority of people might find them abhorrent.
 
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