My wife and I were married at a beautiful bed and breakfast in the small and historic town of Micanopy, Florida, just a few miles south of Gainesville, where we met. Micanopy is a charming little town, the sort where you stop in to go antiquing on Saturdays, or where you might brunch before a little visit to Payne’s Prairie.
Alas that no one in Florida knows that Micanopy. Because what Micanopy really is is Cafe Risque. Like a pornographic South of the Border, I-75 for miles in either direction as one approaches Micanopy is dotted with billboards letting truckers and general citizens know that a world of greasy and tawdry delights awaits them at exit 374.
This is not Cafe Risque. This is where we were married…the Herlong Mansion. Are you being serious right now? “Herlong”? As in “I gave herlong pleasure”? Yes.
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Of the several grocery chains in our area, Bi-Lo is the shadiest, and you can see it in the check-out aisles. Few grocery stores in the area exercise what I think would be the common courtesy of covering up the Cosmo magazines at the check-out (it always seems like Cosmo is the worst), but Bi-Lo is the worst about shoving them right in your face.
The thought that my nine-year-old daughter might be consistently exposed to the sort of misogyny embodied in desperate headlines like “25 Orgasm Tricks That Couples Love” displeases me. I would love to see more grocery store chains adopt policies of covering up those magazines. Ideally, of course, they wouldn’t sell that type of sad pornography for women, but I realize that’s asking the moon.
It would only take enacting a policy. Whatever private company decided to be consistent about such a policy would likely become my new favorite grocery store.
And certainly no one would argue with a private business’ right to choose such a policy.
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I detest federal centralization. I’m all about local representation and a small federal government. I mean, come one, I’m Presbyterian. Even my church polity is about decentralization. The South was right on constitutional grounds…it was a War of Northern Aggression. Lincoln was The Great Centralizer, our Constitution is broken, and now the country’s poorer for it.
Have I established my rabid and crazed anti-federal and anti-centralization radical bona fides? I hope so, because I’m about to get all anti-libertarian on you.
I want city and county governments to make pornographic billboards illegal. GASP! Surely you don’t mean that! Those billboards are on private property!
How wonderful to live in a society with a (at least somewhat) representational government. And that government does not solely exist to keep people off each other and allow them go about their private business. A libertarian thinks that building codes are ridiculous; I think that federal building codes are ridiculous. It’s quite wise of a city or county to make sure no one comes in and starts building and selling really crappy houses to their people. At which point some libertarians say caveat emptor and I ask them to go read Rand by themselves in their selfish little corners.
I am not a libertarian because of Cafe Risque. Or, more appropriately for me now, because of Bedtyme Stories near Blacksburg, SC.
Cafe Risque is actually outside the city limits of Micanopy, which is why it can do what it does. Still, I would love to see the county take care of the problem (yes, I know it won’t because of moneymoneymoney).
The goal of our Constitution was to have minimal federal government.Nothing wrong with a more robust and virile government at town, county, and state levels. In fact, I think that would help in dealing with the federal government. Does this mean that I long for a piling on upon a piling on of laws? No. But I would like Christians to consider being less resentful of the only governments God has put over them that are immediately representational: local government. Of course, most never vote in local elections because they’re busy talking about the evils of Democrats and the Fed.
We have to many laws and too many codes at every level of government. That doesn’t mean we reject all government. The solution is not some principle that rejects the whole package. The solution is the hard work of doing it right. The State exists and is (“Alas”, we think to ourselves) ordained by God. If we have anything to say about the State, it is that it must not be the Leviathan it wishes to be, but that it has a place on the earth. We musn’t abstract government into some sub-category of a sacred meta-concept like Private Property or The Right to Trade.
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Am I suggesting that we legislate morality?
Of course. Is there something else a law is?
Joffre, perhaps your being upset about the billboard might be more effective and your stance more potent if you didn’t include the “This is not Cafe Risque. This is where we were married…the Herlong Mansion. Are you being serious right now? “Herlong”? As in “I gave herlong pleasure”? Yes,” caption under the pic. Just a thought.
I love sex and I love modesty. That’s a whole ‘nother topic that I could go at for a while. Joking about sex is not automatically immodest, nor is it pornography.
You must be a new reader, because this blog is loaded with that sort of comment, mon ami.
I did enjoy your joke about my “potent stance” though. Good one.
“I love sex and I love modesty. That’s a whole ‘nother topic that I could go at for a while. Joking about sex is not automatically immodest, nor is it pornography.”
You are rightly worried about the public display of Cosmo covers, which are also not per se pornographic but pretty inappropriate. How would you feel about magazines displayed at kid’s eye level that used a joke about giving “herlong pleasure”? And if the public display of that would be inappropriate, why not on a blog which is fairly public as well?
For the record I think jokes like that are fine in the company of other men who know what’s up. But isn’t a blog more the equivalent of being in “mixed company”?
Joffre, I could not agree more. I get into arguments every day with people who want religion, morality, and “Faith-based values” kept out of government and politics. They use the incredibly tired quip, “Government should not legislate morality.”
The point, however, is that modern society appears to have forgotten the fundamental and philosophical point of government – to provide for the common good of the society. Your goal of promoting better standards of modesty and chastity is clearly within the realm of “advancing the common good.” So, too, would laws banning abortions, drugs, and similar conduct. I shudder to hear Libertarians talk about the role of government because they believe that the government really has no business doing anything to promote the “common good.” Instead, Libertarians primarily believe that the role of government is to leave the individual as free as possible to seek out his PRIVATE good. “Common good” of the society simply does not enter into the equation of government for a Libertarian.
Thoroughly well said. And I might be wrong, but I believe Publix shields those types of magazine covers, at least at the registers.
You just hate fee speech. But I’ll get to that in a minute, in the mean time, PUBLIC ROADS.
LIbertarians are not fans. Impossible to fix that problem at this point and most people are incapable of even having a serious discussion about private toll roads replacing public ones to reduce taxes and government corruption.
The argument for private toll roads is fairly simple. The more people use the roads the more they would pay (e.g. truckers and commuters). Competition amongst private toll road management companies would improve conditions and services. This unfortunately may not solve the problem of unwanted signage in your vision but at least there would be a chance for consumers to have a say directly as opposed to having to go through a lazy, corrupt and bloated government. Signs are on private land abutting roads so it really is a bit of stretch but I thought I’d mention it. Moving on from the “free market solution” that will never happen.
You say that the state, county or city should make laws to protect you and your family from having pornography, as you are defining it, thrust upon you. Obviously the local electorate doesn’t agree or care that much.
Government has some basic functions under libertarian ideals. Protecting private property is the supreme goal with each individual being their own property and thus protecting the rights of the individual falls under this same maxim. As such I would say that you have only to make your case that your private property rights are being taken to justify your cause as a libertarian. (Note: Rothbard wrote that children are a combination of their own and their parents property as they are incapable of taking care of themselves).
Unfortunately, as you have seemingly already realized this is a difficult proposition with something like a sign on private property. What you are actually talking about is a limitation on speech. Can you justify this because it is damaging your property? Be careful of the argument that it damages your children because they see it. That is the road to tyranny. One in which the government by use of violence or the threat of violence limits speech because some of the people disagree with it.
So what is the solution? Teach your children from it. Sure. Start a campaign to embarrass the owners of the signs. Not threaten them with violence as was done recently here:
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/08/27/atheist-group-removes-billboards-targeting-presidential-candidates-religious-faith/comment-page-7/
But simply find them out and campaign to get them to remove or replace this source of income from their own property under the threat of embarrassment. Perhaps.
Or you could just complain that “somebody should do something”. Oh wait, that is what you are doing here. Aaaah I’m just messing. You are bringing up a very interesting subject. The limitations of government, the people , the collective versus the rights of the individual. It is something that has been debated for centuries and should be constantly debated. I for one will always fall on the side of free markets, freedom of speech and private property rights to as great an extent as I can. Even when it is some delusional religious nut who is trying to cajole my children (what?) to believe in magical beings and dimensions of ultimate happiness with billboards. To do otherwise would be for me to threaten violence on or do violence to others by proxy and if I’m going to be a party to violence I’m going to be the host.
“With respect to the two words “general welfare,” I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators. If the words obtained so readily a place in the “Articles of Confederation,” and received so little notice in their admission into the present Constitution, and retained for so long a time a silent place in both, the fairest explanation is, that the words, in the alternative of meaning nothing or meaning everything, had the former meaning taken for granted.”
— James Madison, Letter to James Robertson
As a final note let me say this. I have thought about this subject of signage, private property, sexuality and free speech before. It is the price you pay for a “free” society. The freer the society the more you will be exposed to things that you do not agree with. You can always fight free speech with free speech. Buy a billboard that counters their billboard. Invent a special pair of glasses that filters out the world for you (oh that’s coming soon along with TSA style x-ray cameras). I don’t have anything else for you except: Teach your children well.
While I appreciate your sentiment and I can understand where you are coming from I have to disagree. I would firstly question why the tyrant up the block is any more acceptable than the tyrant in Washington, it matters little whether I actually can see the man who is picking my pocket, and 4000 people vote for his election rather than 40,000,000, as far as I am concerned this is a distinction with little difference.
Secondly I think in principle the types of laws you would enact for the betterment of society are in principle setting up precedence that is dangerous. Sure, I don’t like sleazy billboards attracting truckers to the “Best Erotic Massage This side of the Mississippi”, however, I don’t think the answer to sleaze is a gun (the state), it’s the gospel. I also warmly agree in your disgust over the smutty magazines about “Secret of how to orgasm for hours”, I like you don’t want my kids seeing that junk. But as I raised already, is the answer to smut a gun? That is what you are injecting into the equation when we say, “There oughta be a law against X!”
Frankly on one level I see the debauchery around us as just part of being in a world that needs Christ. Should we use the state to arrest fornicators, adulterers, and homosexuals? I don’t want my kids to see 2 queers with their hands in each others back pockets smooching, should we make a law, and have the constabulary whisk such offenders away? The same can be said of the war on drugs which has caused the deaths of untold thousands, and drugs are still easily accessible. All of that said, I don’t believe in banning books, booby magazines, booze, drugs, racy billboards, or fanny packs and Crocs (as much as I would like to see some of these things go away).
I do not thereby endorse the vice, I just don’t see the state as the entity to curb vice, that’s the job of the Church, and the family, and ultimately the gospel. If we had a thoroughly gospel saturated society laws banning smutty billboards and magazines would be simply redundant, as it is making such laws now is like giving a blind man a work of Rembrandt and bidding him to admire the true “painter of light”.
God bless
In regards toso called “common goods”, there is no such thing, if it moves privatize it, if it doesn’t move privatize it. Walter Block has some excellent essays on road privatization.
The “Common Good” and the “General Welfare” I presume to be the same thing. Important because one is a legal term, as it is in the U.S. Constitution. The problem, as Madison pointed out in my previously attributed quote, is that it is the ultimate slippery slope and it is meant to be used on a federal level with extreme caution and frugality. There has been far more written on this by greater minds than mine so ‘nuf said.
Regarding “queers with their hands in each others back pockets”. That kind of statement is needlessly homophobic because you target a particular group? I point it out hoping because allowing it to pass would only give it credence. I don’t want to see anyone, fat, skinny, hairy, bald, toothless, rich, poor, black, white, tall (gigantic) or small, playing grab ass and slobbering on other peoples faces in public unless it is newlyweds at their wedding, and even then there is etiquette.
As for God being the answer to legislative morality; I would say that a solid family and an enlightened, healthy and prosperous society is the best counter to the more base predilections of the human condition. The family is of many times greater in importance than society. Exponentially more important.
However, some do not have the benefit of a great family and thus we are serving our own interest as a society to better provide assistance for those who are less fortunate in this regard. These fundamental needs are best provided locally but should be provided. It is I believe the natural course of a free and evolving society to provide these things more readily as they benefit all. As some localities are less able to provide them so to shall they evolve over time to be able to improve if left to there own devices. It is not my place to help them evolve if they are not of my locality but to help them remain free as individuals so that they may evolve as a society.
One may see this as a religious endeavor and for you it may be. I do not. I do not need to believe in a God to know right from wrong although I have certainly been philosophically educated and influenced by religious writing. I need only be enlightened to what is in my best interest and the best interest of those I care about, willing to live my own life in accordance with these ideas and willing to take responsibility for my place as a member of a larger society. It is best for me and mine to have a peaceful, educated, productive and happy society where all people can be free to live in harmony. But this will never be achieved through the threat of violence.
And so finally I return to the original question Joffre. You are correct that someone should do something and so, you are. You are raising your children to be enlightened, healthy and prosperous and thus bettering the world. You may find these billboards a hindrance to that task but it is so minor a thing as to be inconsequential. Perhaps it is an opportunity. Importantly you are also sharing of yourself in your community and helping others to evolve. They may voluntarily listen and accept or reject. Perhaps future generations will listen better so that those signs and all of the distasteful, hurtful and hateful actions of this world may be eliminated. Voluntarily through a free market and a free society. Because I believe there is no other alternative.
John I agree with everything you are saying, with one major exception, I am basically and Anarcho-Capitalist. Your rejection of God and his moral revelation is obviously where we part ways. Without an objective word any talk of morality devolves into subjective gibberish, and as Nietzsche put it morality is simply a weapon of the weak to try to thwart the strong, that’s the end result of the enlightenment you keep talking about. Why is peace something we should seek? Says who? If I can achieve my goals through coercion why shouldn’t I? It’s the “shoulds” that you are going to have a problem with, they become empty and vapid without any objective Author backing them up.
Your morality is intrinsic to how you were raised and the evolution of the human species… You either act like a jerk because you are deviant or you have good morality because you turned out normal.
The Church is responsible for nothing more than claiming it as the source of morality – a lie
Being a good person has nothing to do with your invisible flying spaghetti monster and everything to do with upbringing and human evolution.
I disagree. Fine. I’ll go on being moral and non-religious and you’ll go on being moral and religious. OK. Thank GOD we still have the freedom to do that (for now).
My question would be, where does the law of God authorize the state to take authority over that?
I would argue that the Church is the last entity I want near Government… Morality does not come from Gospel (which is full of mentions respecting slavery and bizarre morality stolen from earlier religion)
Morality is something intrinsic to our evolution found in the sane mind and is common throughout the world regardless of religion (moral surveys show identical results from peoples in America or the Rain Forest Tribes.)
The Church is nothing more than a poisonous relic of the Bronze Age, yet I admit that Christ was full of wisdom… You don’t have to think he is the son of God is see wisdom. These details were made up to indoctrinate generations all the way to the present.