In my entire life.

Nick Gillespie, captures my position on efficacy of television to instruct morality in people:

In a telling and all-too-common moment of Hollywood hubris, director Rob Reiner (who has made some good movies, I think) said, “Hollywood should not be making exploitive violent and exploitive sex films. I think we have a responsibility [to viewers] not to poison their souls.” Thanks, Meathead, but you don’t have access to my soul in the first place. Or those of my kids.

We may be what we eat (which explains the puddles of foie gras that form whenever I stand up), but we’re not what we watch, and creative expression needn’t be the ethical equivalent of a Cross Your Heart Bra, designed to uplift and separate us from our base instincts. And certainly the viewer, whether 15 years old or 45 (alas!), doesn’t need to watch The Secret Life of the American Teenager to know to use condoms or not drink and drive.

One of the great disconnects in American life over the past 30 years is that even as popular culture has been getting more graphic in its depictions of sex and violence, sexual behavior and violent crime among youth have been declining. Folks on the left like Reiner and many on the right often assume a connection between what we watch and how we act. That’s just not the way it works. Which is actually cause for relief.

I would be willing to make the strong argument that television and movies lack the capacity to influence people because of our biology. Using human language to convey morality necessarily requires the use of our language system which, in terms of of affecting morality, relies heavily on coercion, and therefore is only effective so long force is present. Since movies and television lack any real coercive force their ability to affect morality is extremely hindered.

Totally Rules:

A new report shows extensive bias on cable news.

Debunked? This guys won the Nobel prize for figure out how to replicate DNA. His rant against global warming start up about two thirds through.

Many of my readers have argued strongly against Bush’s move towards expanding several intelligence agencies ability to conduct domestic surveillance. I look forward to their denunciation of Obama’s vote in favor of expanding such power.

Barack Obama will be in charge of the biggest domestic and international spying operation in history. Its prime engine is the National Security Agency (NSA)—located and guarded at Fort Meade, Maryland, about 10 miles northeast of Washington, D.C. A brief glimpse of its ever-expanding capacity was provided on October 26 by The Baltimore Sun’s national security correspondent, David Wood: “The NSA’s colossal Cray supercomputer, code-named the ‘Black Widow,’ scans millions of domestic and international phone calls and e-mails every hour. . . . The Black Widow, performing hundreds of trillions of calculations per second, searches through and reassembles key words and patterns, across many languages.”

In July, George W. Bush signed into law the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, which gives the NSA even more power to look for patterns that suggest terrorism links in Americans’ telephone and Internet communications.

The ACLU immediately filed a lawsuit on free speech and privacy grounds. The new Bush law provides farcical judicial supervision over the NSA and other government trackers and databasers. Although Senator Barack Obama voted for this law

Clearly this vote occurred before Obama was elected president but it does reflect the fact that, unlike many of my readers on the left, he was willing to put his man pants on before he made a decision about providing tools to prevent terrorists attacks.

I remember arguments with Michael, Jamie, and Darwin becoming rather heated when talking about Bush’s support. Will such ardor be applied to Obama’s choice to support such legislation? Will these readers strongly denounce Obama’s decision to violate our right to privacy? Stay tuned to see the exciting conclusion.

In a recent post there has been some confusion about what coercion looks like. This is coercion:

In December 2008, she was sentenced to six months in federal prison for the tax offense and has until March 10, 2009 to report to prison. The sentencing judge ordered that she live in a residential community corrections center for up to six months after her release from prison and one year of supervised release after that. She was also ordered to pay the estimated $294,000 she owed the federal government.

This porn star was not doing the government’s bidding, by paying taxes, and as a result, is being imprisoned against her will.

This is to be contrasted with one of her fans choosing not to purchase one of her more recent pornographic films because that fan did not like her performance in a previous video. Note in this second scenario, the fan is not forcing her against her will to perform in a way that the fan prefers. Unlike the state, which is very much forcing her to behave in the way it prefers, i.e., by paying taxes.

In a related matter the state of California is considering disbursing I.O.U.s instead of money for tax refunds. While its unlikely the state of California will suffer any kind of punishment for this action the same can not be said about California taxpayers who adopt the same plan when paying their taxes to the state. This only speaks to the necessary asymmetry of coercion. The state must have a monopoly on coercion which leads to these perverse outcomes in which the state can treat the citizenry differentially then the citizenry can treat the state.

The asymmetry underscores the importance of insuring the citizenry is well armed. Additionally, it highlights the absurdity in seeing the state as a force of positive change. Any change the state attempts to bring about is always backed by the ugliness of coercion.