The Perimeters of Free Expression
Haag, Ernest van den
Ernest van den Haag The Perimeters of Free Expression • (Mr. von den Haag 's essay has been adapted from a talk he delivered before the American Library Association.) Censorship proper, prior...
...Free expression of Adolf Hitler's ideas in "the competition of the market" persuaded Germans to support him...
...Ideas and actions are not easily separated...
...Some persons find pornography offensive because they dislike sex...
...I think it is...
...The more people select independently of each other, the less the likelihood of exclusion by identical tastes, or by concerted action...
...It is the empathy and mutual identification stripped away by pornography which enable us to acknowledge others as fellow humans and which restrain us from treating them as mere means, or sources of sensation...
...Nor is the damage fatal...
...he got a tale of woe culminating in the line, "galleotto fu it libro e chi lo scrisse...
...But this is beside the point...
...wherefore, pornography, while dreary and repulsive to one part of us, is always inviting and seductive to another...
...Most publications concerned with politics are against the government...
...Nothing that is for public sale, nothing publicly accessible, can be fully private...
...The government never should be trusted to protect us from deceptive political claims...
...Freedom of expression certainly stares you in the face...
...A gigantic and senseless dread is set free...
...Borderline cases occur in separating sight from blindness, but they do not preclude the distinction, which, in controversial cases, the courts exist to make...
...Here it is hard for consumers ever to check whether they are sold a bill of goods...
...Such laws are the social analogue and adjunct to individual repressions and sublimations...
...Publishers and editors necessarily must select among manuscripts...
...The slaughtering of cows is a crime in Hindu India...
...It invites us to de-identify, to regard others as mere means...
...None has ever been preceded, or prepared, by such restrictions...
...Else writing would be silly...
...Only Mill and his followers defended unlimited freedom, a remarkable attempt to deny the reality of psychic interdependence.' John Locke held that "no opinions contrary to...
...libraries must select from what is published...
...On the contrary, the elimination of legal repression would stimulate nonlegal repression by private persons and groups—just as stimulations which it cannot handle may bring about sweeping repressions in the individual psyche...
...Speech can be punished, however, when shown to slander, to libel, to infringe on copyrights, on privacy, or on other property rights, or to incite to injurious or unlawful actions...
...I propose here to discuss several cases where it is proper to restrict speech and expression beyond mere selection...
...Further restrictions on freedom of expression do not produce"police states...
...The first problem is the genetic fallacy...
...We do not have emotional ties with insects...
...We are more likely to be swamped than starved...
...But the exhibition or depiction of it—or of other private acts—for the sake of prurient interest, or voyeuristic participation, is offensive nonetheless...
...These "solutions' are what make rationalists so dangerou: and their utopias so oppressive...
...Yet if we do not identify enough with others to feel empathy with them, they are easily relegated beyond the pale, to be used but for the pleasure they can give, or like animals for their hide or teeth...
...This is a popular view, but it embodies two major problems...
...Both are part of us, and both are needed, as is the won between them Laws against pornography are enacted because we are enticed by what they prohibit, and have decided not to yield and, therefore, want to reduce the temptation...
...This, after all, is the reason for all laws...
...It pollutes the social atmosphere and affects bystanders just as pollution of the physical atmosphere does...
...We can be reasonably satisfied here...
...Producers anyway would find it unprofitable to make deceptive claims...
...But such disagreements concern only borderline cases, not the body of either art or pornography...
...Some critics indeed will not, or cannot, tell art, or literature, from pornography...
...Each of us needs all the help society can give...
...To be sure, the seduced reader bears the responsibility for accepting and acting upon what he reads...
...The fear does...
...Wherefore a judicious balance between individual liberty and social restraint is needed, however free the society...
...Others who are often quoted in favor of unlimited freedom of expression did not actually favor anything of the sort...
...Else there is no happiness to be pursued, no use to be made of the freedom secured by society...
...Further, there are two arguments which should caution us against abridging free expression lightly: first, there often is no certain way to separate true from false, innocuous from injurious ideas...
...or, that unbounded freedom produces, or will not harm the shared values...
...When Dante met Francesca in the second circle of Hell, and asked her the customary question, "what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this...
...Total safety is not of this world...
...those moral rules which are necessary to the preservation of civil society are to be tolerated by the magistrates...
...Exclusion, entailed in selection, can no more be avoided than penalization...
...The power of exclusion is not being abused, though the power of inclusion may be...
...Without the Bible, there would be few Christians, without Das Kapital no Marxists, and without The Sorrows of Young Werther there would have been fewer romantic suicides...
...Where individual freedom of expression is among the shared values, penalties still must limit it: unbounded freedom cannot produce the solidarity society needs...
...There is an infinity of publishing houses, magazines, and libraries...
...Unaccountably, the very people who trust the government to protect us from the deceptive claims of advertisers, bitterly oppose protection from deceptive political claims...
...The question is not whether abridgment of any freedom is ever justified, but when it is...
...When they do learn from experience it is usually too late...
...Freedom of expression should also be limited when it offends public decency...
...We are more likely to be swamped than starved...
...That difference is generated by different ideas, attitudes, and fashions which are spread by speech, picture, and print...
...When they do learn from experience it is usually too late...
...Neither history nor logic supports him...
...the cessation of all feelings of consideration...
...Referring to political and moral matters, Holmes wrote: "The best test of truth is the power of thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market...
...I doubt it...
...The fear itself requires defensive laws...
...I am at a loss to explain so striking an inconsistency...
...Freedom of expression certainly stares you in the face...
...Thus, where we have a time-tested and self-correcting institution which permits freedom of expression and the continuous enactment of change, advocacy of its violent overthrow could well be restricted...
...The frequent explanation, that freedom of expression need not be abridged as long as freedom of action can be, does not help...
...The more people select independently of each other, the less the likelihood of exclusion by identical tastes, or by concerted action...
...To argue that defecation is healthy is to evade the question...
...When Dante met Francesca in the second circle of Hell, and asked her the customary question, "what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this...
...most publications concerned with sex are for it...
...The frequent explanation, that freedom of expression need not be abridged as long as freedom of action can be, does not help...
...They cease being fellow humans, ends in themselves, and become instruments...
...But let that go...
...But the exhibition or depiction of it—or of other private acts—for the sake of prurient interest, or voyeuristic participation, is offensive nonetheless...
...or, finally, that abridgment of freedom does not protect shared values and will cause excessive harm...
...Total safety is not of this world...
...Neither history nor logic supports him...
...She was right...
...But there is some safety in numbers...
...It pollutes the social atmosphere and affects bystanders just as pollution of the physical atmosphere does...
...Anyone who favors outlawing pornography is told that he is neurotic since he opposes sex and that this undermines his case...
...Others because they like it...
...It is society that grants the right to pursue values—our freedom—and secures it by restraints...
...Without the Bible, there would be few Christians, without Das Kapital no Marxists, and without The Sorrows of Young Werther there would have been fewer romantic suicides...
...John Stuart Mill admitted in On Liberty that it is "idle sentimentality" to believe that "men are more zealous for truth than they are for error...
...We always bear them with some reluctance...
...No man is an island entire of itself...
...To be sure, the seduced reader bears the responsibility for accepting and acting upon what he reads...
...Nonetheless, Mill's remark is echoed in Justice Holmes' oft-quoted dissent...
...Ultimately, pornography endangers the psychological ties which bind us to our fellows and make society cohere...
...Mill's view is brilliantly explicated and derived and criticized in Gertrude Himmelfarb's On Liberty and Liberalism, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974...
...Had he been as familiar with books as with girls, he would never have said that...
...Borderline cases occur in separating sight from blindness, but they do not preclude the distinction, which, in controversial cases, the courts exist to make...
...Yet, reading does influence, if not compel, people and it can precipitate action...
...But this is beside the point...
...Perhaps truth wins in an unlimited time span...
...We have most ties with those who share most of our values and attitudes, enough to form a society...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975 13 give flaming rhetoric a rest,-and look for perimeters of freedom of speech...
...We do with other sensate beings, because we share a range of sensibilities, attitudes, and values...
...If people did not feel tempted, there would be no problem...
...Francesca blamed the book she had been reading with Paolo Malatesta...
...Once the general distinction is made, one may still disagree on whether a particular item is pornographic...
...Call the range of shared values public decency and we reach the problem of pornography...
...Had he been as familiar with books as with girls, he would never have said that...
...They insist that the freedom of ideologues never be abridged, however great the potential injury to consumers...
...But by reducing the world to orifices and organs, to bare, solipsistic sensations, pornography implicitly denies solidarity, thought, feeling, or love, the human ties on which society rests...
...But for most, "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak...
...The issue is not which acts should be performed, but which acts should be private, what offends public decency...
...This is a popular view, but it embodies two major problems...
...The "competition of the market" may be the most economic and least burdensome way of making decisions...
...Unaccountably, the very people who trust the government to protect us from the deceptive claims of advertisers, bitterly oppose protection from deceptive political claims...
...It invites us to de-identify, to regard others as mere means...
...And since all our freedoms ultimately depend on the strength of shared values and social bonds, the cause of freedom might be better served in this case, too, if our freedom were properly circumscribed...
...This harm would be unavoidable if pornography were not separable from works of merit...
...No man is an island entire of itself...
...She was right...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975 15 Ernest van den Haag The Perimeters of Free Expression • (Mr...
...Individuals can easily refrain from attending obscene spectacles or from reading pornographic books...
...On the contrary, the elimination of legal repression would stimulate nonlegal repression by private persons and groups—just as stimulations which it cannot handle may bring about sweeping repressions in the individual psyche...
...It becomes empty, useless, and boring...
...These limitations of freedom cannot be avoided, for all rights are necessarily limited by other rights, and by the rights of others...
...As for John Milton's Areopagitica it is a paean to freedom of speech—but to a well bounded freedom, extending but to "neighboring differences or rather indifferences" and not beliefs which arc "impious or evil absolutely either against faith or manners...
...Sometimes it is feared that outlawing pornography will produce aesthetic or literary harm...
...Entry is reasonably free and easy...
...Each makes its own selection...
...But so does everything else...
...The sexual nature of human beings has not changed in historical time...
...The cravings pornography mobilizes are felt by many persons as threats to what personality integration and ego dominance they have achieved...
...Ideal "solutions" that ignore (or define away) the problems actual people have in the actua world are not helpful...
...Whether neurotic or not, the sex life of the advocate is irrelevant to the merits of what he advocates...
...That difference is generated by different ideas, attitudes, and fashions which are spread by speech, picture, and print...
...most publications concerned with sex are for it...
...Now, if we call "true" a thought because it has been accepted, Holmes' argument is correct because circular...
...But such disagreements concern only borderline cases, not the body of either art or pornography...
...However, they proclaim as wrong what they forbid...
...If people did not feel tempted, there would be no problem...
...Each makes its own selection...
...The "competition of the market" may be the most economic and least burdensome way of making decisions...
...To argue that defecation is healthy is to evade the question...
...They would lose sales when customers learn they have been deceived...
...Therefore we prohibit gladiatorial combat among consenting adults because it is degrading and indecent, even though those involved volunteer, as pornographic actors do, and spectators could easily refrain from observing...
...Censorship proper, prior restraint of expression, is unconstitutional in the United States...
...Such beliefs were to be "extirpated" rather than tolerated...
...But the government cannot be shown to do any better...
...Societies attempt to preserve common values, without precluding their evolution and change, through institutions such as schools, churches, and libraries, and by sanctions against those who venture too far beyond the traditional range...
...Objectors to this kind of limitation believe that a range of shared values is not necessary for a society...
...Yet if we do not identify enough with others to feel empathy with them, they are easily relegated beyond the pale, to be used but for the pleasure they can give, or like animals for their hide or teeth...
...Keep in mind, though, that public decency is not limited to sexual matters...
...Jimmy Walker is debited with the remark: "no girl has ever been seduced by a book...
...Thus, where we have a time-tested and self-correcting institution which permits freedom of expression and the continuous enactment of change, advocacy of its violent overthrow could well be restricted...
...But for most, "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak...
...Ideal "solutions" that ignore (or define away) the problems actual people have in the actua world are not helpful...
...Each of us needs all the help society can give...
...Others who are often quoted in favor of unlimited freedom of expression did not actually favor anything of the sort...
...he got a tale of woe culminating in the line, "galleotto fu it libro e chi lo scrisse...
...Now, if we call "true" a thought because it has been accepted, Holmes' argument is correct because circular...
...Else there is no happiness to be pursued, no use to be made of the freedom secured by society...
...And our freedoms would be safer if all advocacy of their abolition by unconstitutional means were penalized just as action is now...
...Exclusion, entailed in selection, can no more be avoided than penalization...
...Producers anyway would find it unprofitable to make deceptive claims...
...The pornographic regression separates sexual impulse from the emotions normally fused wit] them, from reality as well as morality 14 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 19T above all from socially indispensable restraints and sublimations...
...His freedom was not abridged, owing to the doctrinaire cowardice of the Weimar Republic, which led to its undoing, and to more than twenty million dead, many dying horrendously in concentration camps...
...Keep in mind, though, that public decency is not limited to sexual matters...
...Otherwise we find no evidence for truth prevailing more often than false-hood, even where there is freedom...
...John Stuart Mill admitted in On Liberty that it is "idle sentimentality" to believe that "men are more zealous for truth than they are for error...
...Similarly, society must make it possible for values to be generated and attained by imposing restraints on what would erode them...
...Else writing would be silly...
...Regulatory agenices are meant to protect the consumer against being misled, although he could easily learn from experience whether he was deceived about the soap he bought and, if so, stop buying it...
...Speech can be punished, however, when shown to slander, to libel, to infringe on copyrights, on privacy, or on other property rights, or to incite to injurious or unlawful actions...
...Freedom of expression should also be limited when it offends public decency...
...The offensive activity will still occur, but it will occur furtively, and less often...
...I have quoted Mill and Holmes for they have been most influential in forming the opinion so prevailing now among the college educated...
...Both are part of us, and both are needed, as is the won between them Laws against pornography are enacted because we are enticed by what they prohibit, and have decided not to yield and, therefore, want to reduce the temptation...
...Defecation is not objectionable...
...The sexual nature of human beings has not changed in historical time...
...It matters not at all whether such a loss would actually occur...
...But anyone who cannot distinguish between what is art and what is not has no business being a critic...
...And penalties raise the cost of what they penalize...
...As for John Milton's Areopagitica it is a paean to freedom of speech—but to a well bounded freedom, extending but to "neighboring differences or rather indifferences" and not beliefs which arc "impious or evil absolutely either against faith or manners...
...or, finally, that abridgment of freedom does not protect shared values and will cause excessive harm...
...But the sexes court, or seduce each other, and perceive their emotions and roles quite differently in each period...
...Advertising and public knowledge cause publicly available pornography to affect society as a whole...
...Granted as much, I think we should "That idea and action are easily separated is a mistaken view which dies hard...
...Advocacy can be distinguished from analysis, discussion, or prediction, inasmuch as there is a clear intent to organize for, or to produce action...
...Admittedly neither repression nor outlawing what mobilizes the repressed is an ideal solution to problems of anxiety of self-control...
...But the government cannot be shown to do any better...
...Some persons find pornography offensive because they dislike sex...
...But it does not matter, since the merits of an argument are independent of the merits, or motives, of those who urge it...
...those moral rules which are necessary to the preservation of civil society are to be tolerated by the magistrates...
...Therefore we prohibit gladiatorial combat among consenting adults because it is degrading and indecent, even though those involved volunteer, as pornographic actors do, and spectators could easily refrain from observing...
...In a sense this is but a spinning out of pre-adolescent fantasies which reject reality and the burdens of individuation, of thought, restraint, tension, conflict, commitment, consideration, and love, of regarding others as more than objects—burdens which become both heavier and less avoidable as we pass through adolescence...
...A gigantic and senseless dread is set free...
...Now, what is prohibited and punished is what tempts at least some people...
...Not so with political or general ideas...
...Regulatory agenices are meant to protect the consumer against being misled, although he could easily learn from experience whether he was deceived about the soap he bought and, if so, stop buying it...
...Here it is hard for consumers ever to check whether they are sold a bill of goods...
...Pornography strikes at that basis...
...Individuals can easily refrain from attending obscene spectacles or from reading pornographic books...
...Restrictions are needed not only because the shared values are what they are, but also because they play the social role they play: they express shared sensibilities, are intensely held, and are, or have become, important to social cohesion...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975 15 Ernest van den Haag The Perimeters of Free Expression • (Mr...
...Even when they don't read them, girls are seduced by books, Gloria Steinem as much as Emma Bovary or Francesca da Rimini...
...They would not become psychologically unnecessary if they were demonstrated to be rationally unneeded...
...I propose here to discuss several cases where it is proper to restrict speech and expression beyond mere selection...
...Even when they don't read them, girls are seduced by books, Gloria Steinem as much as Emma Bovary or Francesca da Rimini...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975 13 give flaming rhetoric a rest,-and look for perimeters of freedom of speech...
...But so does everything else...
...As Sigmund Freud wrote in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, "The disappearance of the emotional ties which hold the group together [produces...
...Referring to political and moral matters, Holmes wrote: "The best test of truth is the power of thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market...
...This is a high price to pay for Hitler's unabridged freedom, the effects of which were foreseeable...
...They fear a loss of control...
...Incidentally, neither the liking nor the disliking need be neurotic...
...So is the raising of pigs in Israel...
...Further restrictions on freedom of expression do not produce"police states...
...The cravings pornography mobilizes are felt by many persons as threats to what personality integration and ego dominance they have achieved...
...Ideas and actions are not easily separated...
...As Sigmund Freud wrote in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, "The disappearance of the emotional ties which hold the group together [produces...
...Yet, reading does influence, if not compel, people and it can precipitate action...
...Granted as much, I think we should "That idea and action are easily separated is a mistaken view which dies hard...
...But let that go...
...Only Mill and his followers defended unlimited freedom, a remarkable attempt to deny the reality of psychic interdependence.' John Locke held that "no opinions contrary to...
...I am at a loss to explain so striking an inconsistency...
...The instrumental benefits of free speech are therefore unproven, and its dangers art clear, but freedom of speech still remains desirable for its own sake...
...Consider individuals first...
...So is the raising of pigs in Israel...
...I think it is...
...I doubt it...
...Otherwise we find no evidence for truth prevailing more often than false-hood, even where there is freedom...
...Pornography strikes at that basis...
...Such beliefs were to be "extirpated" rather than tolerated...
...These "solutions' are what make rationalists so dangerou: and their utopias so oppressive...
...This harm would be unavoidable if pornography were not separable from works of merit...
...But anyone who cannot distinguish between what is art and what is not has no business being a critic...
...Mill's view is brilliantly explicated and derived and criticized in Gertrude Himmelfarb's On Liberty and Liberalism, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974...
...They would not become psychologically unnecessary if they were demonstrated to be rationally unneeded...
...Similarly, society must make it possible for values to be generated and attained by imposing restraints on what would erode them...
...This, after all, is the reason for all laws...
...We have most ties with those who share most of our values and attitudes, enough to form a society...
...We can be reasonably satisfied here...
...There is a strong case for abridging freedom when abridgment actually helps to safeguard freedom...
...But it does not matter, since the merits of an argument are independent of the merits, or motives, of those who urge it...
...Further, there are two arguments which should caution us against abridging free expression lightly: first, there often is no certain way to separate true from false, innocuous from injurious ideas...
...Second, to object to pornography is to object to public depiction or performance of sex acts, not to the sex acts performed or depicted...
...Where individual freedom of expression is among the shared values, penalties still must limit it: unbounded freedom cannot produce the solidarity society needs...
...Nor is the damage fatal...
...When you want to stop buying a political idea such as disarmament, or an ideology such as Marxism, or Nazism, you may find that you have been sold and cannot get a refund...
...Granted that shared values must be protected when they are important in the normative structure of a society—why is restraint of public sexual display so important...
...And since all our freedoms ultimately depend on the strength of shared values and social bonds, the cause of freedom might be better served in this case, too, if our freedom were properly circumscribed...
...Most publications concerned with politics are against the government...
...The problem is not solved by removing the spirit and inviting the flesh...
...Nonetheless, the freedom of producers to make claims is restricted to protect consumers...
...The first problem is the genetic fallacy...
...Francesca blamed the book she had been reading with Paolo Malatesta...
...Restrictions are needed not only because the shared values are what they are, but also because they play the social role they play: they express shared sensibilities, are intensely held, and are, or have become, important to social cohesion...
...or, that unbounded freedom produces, or will not harm the shared values...
...Freedom of speech dates back only a few centuries and is usually defended with more eloquence than cogency...
...the cessation of all feelings of consideration...
...In a sense this is but a spinning out of pre-adolescent fantasies which reject reality and the burdens of individuation, of thought, restraint, tension, conflict, commitment, consideration, and love, of regarding others as more than objects—burdens which become both heavier and less avoidable as we pass through adolescence...
...But we do not live in an ideal world nor with ideal people...
...Censorship proper, prior restraint of expression, is unconstitutional in the United States...
...They cease being fellow humans, ends in themselves, and become instruments...
...Publishers and editors necessarily must select among manuscripts...
...How does pornography endanger individuals or society...
...Nothing that is for public sale, nothing publicly accessible, can be fully private...
...Anyone who favors outlawing pornography is told that he is neurotic since he opposes sex and that this undermines his case...
...They would lose sales when customers learn they have been deceived...
...Can societies cohere without a common outlook...
...On the contrary, political oppression usually is a reaction, not to limitations, but to what is felt as excessive freedom...
...Nonetheless, the freedom of producers to make claims is restricted to protect consumers...
...Society is imperiled by pornography n( less than individuals...
...But there is some safety in numbers...
...Call the range of shared values public decency and we reach the problem of pornography...
...Freedom of speech dates back only a few centuries and is usually defended with more eloquence than cogency...
...But the decisions that emerge are not right, or the thoughts true, because they were freely accepted...
...Some critics indeed will not, or cannot, tell art, or literature, from pornography...
...Objectors to this kind of limitation believe that a range of shared values is not necessary for a society...
...libraries must select from what is published...
...They fear a loss of control...
...It matters not at all whether such a loss would actually occur...
...The question is not whether abridgment of any freedom is ever justified, but when it is...
...It is society that grants the right to pursue values—our freedom—and secures it by restraints...
...The offensive activity will still occur, but it will occur furtively, and less often...
...Where the merits or demerits of goods and services are concerned, we do not trust the competition of the market to discover the truth...
...The instrumental benefits of free speech are therefore unproven, and its dangers art clear, but freedom of speech still remains desirable for its own sake...
...Often the fear is projected on others: the fearful person may see them as uncontrolled, himself as a victim...
...The slaughtering of cows is a crime in Hindu India...
...second, if there is such a way, public authorities are unlikely to find it...
...Jimmy Walker is debited with the remark: "no girl has ever been seduced by a book...
...Nonetheless, Mill's remark is echoed in Justice Holmes' oft-quoted dissent...
...Free expression of Adolf Hitler's ideas in "the competition of the market" persuaded Germans to support him...
...Ralph Waldo Emerson pointed out that the moral identity which we feel with other human beings is the basis of any society...
...Holmes and Mill went too far in asserting that somehow "the competition of the market" would be "the best test," or a good one, to separate true from false ideas...
...We always bear them with some reluctance...
...The problem is not solved by removing the spirit and inviting the flesh...
...Societies attempt to preserve common values, without precluding their evolution and change, through institutions such as schools, churches, and libraries, and by sanctions against those who venture too far beyond the traditional range...
...Society is imperiled by pornography n( less than individuals...
...When you want to stop buying a political idea such as disarmament, or an ideology such as Marxism, or Nazism, you may find that you have been sold and cannot get a refund...
...And our freedoms would be safer if all advocacy of their abolition by unconstitutional means were penalized just as action is now...
...The mentality of each of us unavoidably affects the qualityof life of all of us...
...The fear does...
...Can societies cohere without a common outlook...
...It removes the indispensable internal barriers to crime...
...But he still wrote that, given freedom, truth wins: "Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument...
...The issue is not which acts should be performed, but which acts should be private, what offends public decency...
...We do not have emotional ties with insects...
...Advertising and public knowledge cause publicly available pornography to affect society as a whole...
...Where the merits or demerits of goods and services are concerned, we do not trust the competition of the market to discover the truth...
...There is a strong case for abridging freedom when abridgment actually helps to safeguard freedom...
...Wherefore a judicious balance between individual liberty and social restraint is needed, however free the society...
...The question is how to minimize abuse of the power of selection...
...Entry is reasonably free and easy...
...But by reducing the world to orifices and organs, to bare, solipsistic sensations, pornography implicitly denies solidarity, thought, feeling, or love, the human ties on which society rests...
...The government never should be trusted to protect us from deceptive political claims...
...They insist that the freedom of ideologues never be abridged, however great the potential injury to consumers...
...But the decisions that emerge are not right, or the thoughts true, because they were freely accepted...
...Admittedly neither repression nor outlawing what mobilizes the repressed is an ideal solution to problems of anxiety of self-control...
...These limitations of freedom cannot be avoided, for all rights are necessarily limited by other rights, and by the rights of others...
...Others because they like it...
...Whether neurotic or not, the sex life of the advocate is irrelevant to the merits of what he advocates...
...Granted that shared values must be protected when they are important in the normative structure of a society—why is restraint of public sexual display so important...
...Ultimately, pornography endangers the psychological ties which bind us to our fellows and make society cohere...
...There is an infinity of publishing houses, magazines, and libraries...
...His freedom was not abridged, owing to the doctrinaire cowardice of the Weimar Republic, which led to its undoing, and to more than twenty million dead, many dying horrendously in concentration camps...
...The question is how to minimize abuse of the power of selection...
...We do with other sensate beings, because we share a range of sensibilities, attitudes, and values...
...The mentality of each of us unavoidably affects the qualityof life of all of us...
...It is the empathy and mutual identification stripped away by pornography which enable us to acknowledge others as fellow humans and which restrain us from treating them as mere means, or sources of sensation...
...And penalties raise the cost of what they penalize...
...Incidentally, neither the liking nor the disliking need be neurotic...
...Therefore, prohibitions are unlikely to eliminate altogether what they prohibit...
...Perhaps truth wins in an unlimited time span...
...Sometimes it is feared that outlawing pornography will produce aesthetic or literary harm...
...However, they proclaim as wrong what they forbid...
...The pornographic regression separates sexual impulse from the emotions normally fused wit] them, from reality as well as morality 14 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 19T above all from socially indispensable restraints and sublimations...
...This is a high price to pay for Hitler's unabridged freedom, the effects of which were foreseeable...
...Not so with political or general ideas...
...Such laws are the social analogue and adjunct to individual repressions and sublimations...
...The power of exclusion is not being abused, though the power of inclusion may be...
...Defecation is not objectionable...
...Therefore, a defense of sex evades the question...
...wherefore, pornography, while dreary and repulsive to one part of us, is always inviting and seductive to another...
...second, if there is such a way, public authorities are unlikely to find it...
...It becomes empty, useless, and boring...
...But the sexes court, or seduce each other, and perceive their emotions and roles quite differently in each period...
...But we do not live in an ideal world nor with ideal people...
...None has ever been preceded, or prepared, by such restrictions...
...Ralph Waldo Emerson pointed out that the moral identity which we feel with other human beings is the basis of any society...
...How does pornography endanger individuals or society...
...Holmes and Mill went too far in asserting that somehow "the competition of the market" would be "the best test," or a good one, to separate true from false ideas...
...Often the fear is projected on others: the fearful person may see them as uncontrolled, himself as a victim...
...The fear itself requires defensive laws...
...I have quoted Mill and Holmes for they have been most influential in forming the opinion so prevailing now among the college educated...
...Once the general distinction is made, one may still disagree on whether a particular item is pornographic...
...It removes the indispensable internal barriers to crime...
...Now, what is prohibited and punished is what tempts at least some people...
...Advocacy can be distinguished from analysis, discussion, or prediction, inasmuch as there is a clear intent to organize for, or to produce action...
...Therefore, a defense of sex evades the question...
...Therefore, prohibitions are unlikely to eliminate altogether what they prohibit...
...But he still wrote that, given freedom, truth wins: "Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument...
...Consider individuals first...
...On the contrary, political oppression usually is a reaction, not to limitations, but to what is felt as excessive freedom...
...Second, to object to pornography is to object to public depiction or performance of sex acts, not to the sex acts performed or depicted...
Vol. 9 • December 1975 • No. 3
