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...
...wherefore, pornography, while dreary and repulsive to one part of us, is always inviting and seductive to another...
...Perhaps truth wins in an unlimited time span...
...Further restrictions on freedom of expression do not produce"police states...
...The issue is not which acts should be performed, but which acts should be private, what offends public decency...
...Freedom of speech dates back only a few centuries and is usually defended with more eloquence than cogency...
...However, they proclaim as wrong what they forbid...
...he got a tale of woe culminating in the line, "galleotto fu it libro e chi lo scrisse...
...Else there is no happiness to be pursued, no use to be made of the freedom secured by society...
...The cravings pornography mobilizes are felt by many persons as threats to what personality integration and ego dominance they have achieved...
...But we do not live in an ideal world nor with ideal people...
...Jimmy Walker is debited with the remark: "no girl has ever been seduced by a book...
...But for most, "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak...
...Pornography strikes at that basis...
...he got a tale of woe culminating in the line, "galleotto fu it libro e chi lo scrisse...
...These "solutions' are what make rationalists so dangerou: and their utopias so oppressive...
...This, after all, is the reason for all laws...
...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...
...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...
...They would not become psychologically unnecessary if they were demonstrated to be rationally unneeded...
...Advertising and public knowledge cause publicly available pornography to affect society as a whole...
...This, after all, is the reason for all laws...
...The offensive activity will still occur, but it will occur furtively, and less often...
...The mentality of each of us unavoidably affects the qualityof life of all of us...
...Some critics indeed will not, or cannot, tell art, or literature, from pornography...
...The first problem is the genetic fallacy...
...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...
...Producers anyway would find it unprofitable to make deceptive claims...
...Free expression of Adolf Hitler's ideas in "the competition of the market" persuaded Germans to support him...
...Nor is the damage fatal...
...The fear does...
...The mentality of each of us unavoidably affects the qualityof life of all of us...
...Jimmy Walker is debited with the remark: "no girl has ever been seduced by a book...
...She was right...
...Keep in mind, though, that public decency is not limited to sexual matters...
...A gigantic and senseless dread is set free...
...This harm would be unavoidable if pornography were not separable from works of merit...
...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...
...They cease being fellow humans, ends in themselves, and become instruments...
...We do with other sensate beings, because we share a range of sensibilities, attitudes, and values...
...Nonetheless, Mill's remark is echoed in Justice Holmes' oft-quoted dissent...
...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...
...A gigantic and senseless dread is set free...
...It removes the indispensable internal barriers to crime...
...Wherefore a judicious balance between individual liberty and social restraint is needed, however free the society...
...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...
...Each of us needs all the help society can give...
...The problem is not solved by removing the spirit and inviting the flesh...
...We do with other sensate beings, because we share a range of sensibilities, attitudes, and values...
...Advertising and public knowledge cause publicly available pornography to affect society as a whole...
...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...
...Similarly, society must make it possible for values to be generated and attained by imposing restraints on what would erode them...
...But we do not live in an ideal world nor with ideal people...
...Freedom of speech dates back only a few centuries and is usually defended with more eloquence than cogency...
...It matters not at all whether such a loss would actually occur...
...Granted as much, I think we should "That idea and action are easily separated is a mistaken view which dies hard...
...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...
...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...
...Not so with political or general ideas...
...The issue is not which acts should be performed, but which acts should be private, what offends public decency...
...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...
...Nonetheless, the freedom of producers to make claims is restricted to protect consumers...
...Admittedly neither repression nor outlawing what mobilizes the repressed is an ideal solution to problems of anxiety of self-control...
...The "competition of the market" may be the most economic and least burdensome way of making decisions...
...Otherwise we find no evidence for truth prevailing more often than false-hood, even where there is freedom...
...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...
...Advocacy can be distinguished from analysis, discussion, or prediction, inasmuch as there is a clear intent to organize for, or to produce action...
...We can be reasonably satisfied here...
...Even when they don't read them, girls are seduced by books, Gloria Steinem as much as Emma Bovary or Francesca da Rimini...
...Mill's view is brilliantly explicated and derived and criticized in Gertrude Himmelfarb's On Liberty and Liberalism, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974...
...Else there is no happiness to be pursued, no use to be made of the freedom secured by society...
...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...
...Here it is hard for consumers ever to check whether they are sold a bill of goods...
...The frequent explanation, that freedom of expression need not be abridged as long as freedom of action can be, does not help...
...The government never should be trusted to protect us from deceptive political claims...
...But the sexes court, or seduce each other, and perceive their emotions and roles quite differently in each period...
...No man is an island entire of itself...
...These "solutions' are what make rationalists so dangerou: and their utopias so oppressive...
...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...
...Second, to object to pornography is to object to public depiction or performance of sex acts, not to the sex acts performed or depicted...
...Nonetheless, the freedom of producers to make claims is restricted to protect consumers...
...Some persons find pornography offensive because they dislike sex...
...I think it is...
...Some critics indeed will not, or cannot, tell art, or literature, from pornography...
...Therefore, prohibitions are unlikely to eliminate altogether what they prohibit...
...Francesca blamed the book she had been reading with Paolo Malatesta...
...This is a popular view, but it embodies two major problems...
...And penalties raise the cost of what they penalize...
...Borderline cases occur in separating sight from blindness, but they do not preclude the distinction, which, in controversial cases, the courts exist to make...
...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...
...those moral rules which are necessary to the preservation of civil society are to be tolerated by the magistrates...
...They fear a loss of control...
...Here it is hard for consumers ever to check whether they are sold a bill of goods...
...The first problem is the genetic fallacy...
...These limitations of freedom cannot be avoided, for all rights are necessarily limited by other rights, and by the rights of others...
...Unaccountably, the very people who trust the government to protect us from the deceptive claims of advertisers, bitterly oppose protection from deceptive political claims...
...Mill's view is brilliantly explicated and derived and criticized in Gertrude Himmelfarb's On Liberty and Liberalism, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974...
...To argue that defecation is healthy is to evade the question...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975 13 give flaming rhetoric a rest,-and look for perimeters of freedom of speech...
...Nor is the damage fatal...
...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...
...Consider individuals first...
...Freedom of expression should also be limited when it offends public decency...
...Where individual freedom of expression is among the shared values, penalties still must limit it: unbounded freedom cannot produce the solidarity society needs...
...But there is some safety in numbers...
...Sometimes it is feared that outlawing pornography will produce aesthetic or literary harm...
...When they do learn from experience it is usually too late...
...And our freedoms would be safer if all advocacy of their abolition by unconstitutional means were penalized just as action is now...
...Defecation is not objectionable...
...Objectors to this kind of limitation believe that a range of shared values is not necessary for a society...
...Call the range of shared values public decency and we reach the problem of pornography...
...Most publications concerned with politics are against the government...
...But this is beside the point...
...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...
...Free expression of Adolf Hitler's ideas in "the competition of the market" persuaded Germans to support him...
...But let that go...
...But the sexes court, or seduce each other, and perceive their emotions and roles quite differently in each period...
...We always bear them with some reluctance...
...The question is how to minimize abuse of the power of selection...
...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...
...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...
...But it does not matter, since the merits of an argument are independent of the merits, or motives, of those who urge it...
...We are more likely to be swamped than starved...
...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 "competition of the market" may be the most economic and least burdensome way of making decisions...
...Ultimately, pornography endangers the psychological ties which bind us to our fellows and make society cohere...
...This is a popular view, but it embodies two major problems...
...How does pornography endanger individuals or society...
...Exclusion, entailed in selection, can no more be avoided than penalization...
...But he still wrote that, given freedom, truth wins: "Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument...
...They cease being fellow humans, ends in themselves, and become instruments...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975 15 Ernest van den Haag The Perimeters of Free Expression • (Mr...
...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...
...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...
...Advocacy can be distinguished from analysis, discussion, or prediction, inasmuch as there is a clear intent to organize for, or to produce action...
...Incidentally, neither the liking nor the disliking need be neurotic...
...But there is some safety in numbers...
...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...
...Therefore, a defense of sex evades the question...
...the cessation of all feelings of consideration...
...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...
...But such disagreements concern only borderline cases, not the body of either art or pornography...
...But the exhibition or depiction of it—or of other private acts—for the sake of prurient interest, or voyeuristic participation, is offensive nonetheless...
...But anyone who cannot distinguish between what is art and what is not has no business being a critic...
...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...
...Consider individuals first...
...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...
...But so does everything else...
...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...
...Individuals can easily refrain from attending obscene spectacles or from reading pornographic books...
...Once the general distinction is made, one may still disagree on whether a particular item is pornographic...
...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...
...Such beliefs were to be "extirpated" rather than tolerated...
...Where the merits or demerits of goods and services are concerned, we do not trust the competition of the market to discover the truth...
...Further restrictions on freedom of expression do not produce"police states...
...Exclusion, entailed in selection, can no more be avoided than penalization...
...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 fear itself requires defensive laws...
...I am at a loss to explain so striking an inconsistency...
...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...
...It invites us to de-identify, to regard others as mere means...
...But anyone who cannot distinguish between what is art and what is not has no business being a critic...
...Ideas and actions are not easily separated...
...We always bear them with some reluctance...
...The government never should be trusted to protect us from deceptive political claims...
...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...
...Society is imperiled by pornography n( less than individuals...
...To be sure, the seduced reader bears the responsibility for accepting and acting upon what he reads...
...Each of us needs all the help society can give...
...They insist that the freedom of ideologues never be abridged, however great the potential injury to consumers...
...Else writing would be silly...
...The slaughtering of cows is a crime in Hindu India...
...The frequent explanation, that freedom of expression need not be abridged as long as freedom of action can be, does not help...
...Yet, reading does influence, if not compel, people and it can precipitate action...
...Once the general distinction is made, one may still disagree on whether a particular item is pornographic...
...We do not have emotional ties with insects...
...But he still wrote that, given freedom, truth wins: "Wrong opinions and practices gradually yield to fact and argument...
...That difference is generated by different ideas, attitudes, and fashions which are spread by speech, picture, and print...
...wherefore, pornography, while dreary and repulsive to one part of us, is always inviting and seductive to another...
...We have most ties with those who share most of our values and attitudes, enough to form a society...
...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...
...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...
...Ultimately, pornography endangers the psychological ties which bind us to our fellows and make society cohere...
...The more people select independently of each other, the less the likelihood of exclusion by identical tastes, or by concerted action...
...Incidentally, neither the liking nor the disliking need be neurotic...
...The question is how to minimize abuse of the power of selection...
...It removes the indispensable internal barriers to crime...
...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...
...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...
...They would lose sales when customers learn they have been deceived...
...Whether neurotic or not, the sex life of the advocate is irrelevant to the merits of what he advocates...
...However, they proclaim as wrong what they forbid...
...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...
...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...
...Others who are often quoted in favor of unlimited freedom of expression did not actually favor anything of the sort...
...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...
...I am at a loss to explain so striking an inconsistency...
...There is a strong case for abridging freedom when abridgment actually helps to safeguard freedom...
...Now, if we call "true" a thought because it has been accepted, Holmes' argument is correct because circular...
...The fear itself requires defensive laws...
...Wherefore a judicious balance between individual liberty and social restraint is needed, however free the society...
...Call the range of shared values public decency and we reach the problem of pornography...
...or, finally, that abridgment of freedom does not protect shared values and will cause excessive harm...
...or, finally, that abridgment of freedom does not protect shared values and will cause excessive harm...
...Defecation is not objectionable...
...The sexual nature of human beings has not changed in historical time...
...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...
...They insist that the freedom of ideologues never be abridged, however great the potential injury to consumers...
...But so does everything else...
...There is an infinity of publishing houses, magazines, and libraries...
...Can societies cohere without a common outlook...
...I propose here to discuss several cases where it is proper to restrict speech and expression beyond mere selection...
...But such disagreements concern only borderline cases, not the body of either art or pornography...
...Therefore, prohibitions are unlikely to eliminate altogether what they prohibit...
...libraries must select from what is published...
...Censorship proper, prior restraint of expression, is unconstitutional in the United States...
...But for most, "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak...
...second, if there is such a way, public authorities are unlikely to find it...
...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...
...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...
...Francesca blamed the book she had been reading with Paolo Malatesta...
...The more people select independently of each other, the less the likelihood of exclusion by identical tastes, or by concerted action...
...Second, to object to pornography is to object to public depiction or performance of sex acts, not to the sex acts performed or depicted...
...I think it is...
...Had he been as familiar with books as with girls, he would never have said that...
...Producers anyway would find it unprofitable to make deceptive claims...
...She was right...
...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...
...The fear does...
...those moral rules which are necessary to the preservation of civil society are to be tolerated by the magistrates...
...To argue that defecation is healthy is to evade the question...
...Others who are often quoted in favor of unlimited freedom of expression did not actually favor anything of the sort...
...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...
...Such beliefs were to be "extirpated" rather than tolerated...
...They would lose sales when customers learn they have been deceived...
...There is an infinity of publishing houses, magazines, and libraries...
...Now, what is prohibited and punished is what tempts at least some people...
...I doubt it...
...Ralph Waldo Emerson pointed out that the moral identity which we feel with other human beings is the basis of any society...
...We can be reasonably satisfied here...
...To be sure, the seduced reader bears the responsibility for accepting and acting upon what he reads...
...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...
...Now, what is prohibited and punished is what tempts at least some people...
...It becomes empty, useless, and boring...
...Granted as much, I think we should "That idea and action are easily separated is a mistaken view which dies hard...
...Not so with political or general ideas...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1975 13 give flaming rhetoric a rest,-and look for perimeters of freedom of speech...
...No man is an island entire of itself...
...But let that go...
...There is a strong case for abridging freedom when abridgment actually helps to safeguard freedom...
...Nonetheless, Mill's remark is echoed in Justice Holmes' oft-quoted dissent...
...None has ever been preceded, or prepared, by such restrictions...
...Anyone who favors outlawing pornography is told that he is neurotic since he opposes sex and that this undermines his case...
...Most publications concerned with politics are against the government...
...It pollutes the social atmosphere and affects bystanders just as pollution of the physical atmosphere does...
...Society is imperiled by pornography n( less than individuals...
...Others because they like it...
...or, that unbounded freedom produces, or will not harm the shared values...
...The cravings pornography mobilizes are felt by many persons as threats to what personality integration and ego dominance they have achieved...
...So is the raising of pigs in Israel...
...libraries must select from what is published...
...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 power of exclusion is not being abused, though the power of inclusion may be...
...Often the fear is projected on others: the fearful person may see them as uncontrolled, himself as a victim...
...Keep in mind, though, that public decency is not limited to sexual matters...
...Entry is reasonably free and easy...
...Ideal "solutions" that ignore (or define away) the problems actual people have in the actua world are not helpful...
...Publishers and editors necessarily must select among manuscripts...
...And our freedoms would be safer if all advocacy of their abolition by unconstitutional means were penalized just as action is now...
...It invites us to de-identify, to regard others as mere means...
...But this is beside the point...
...This harm would be unavoidable if pornography were not separable from works of merit...
...most publications concerned with sex are for it...
...or, that unbounded freedom produces, or will not harm the shared values...
...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...
...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...
...Freedom of expression certainly stares you in the face...
...But the decisions that emerge are not right, or the thoughts true, because they were freely accepted...
...If people did not feel tempted, there would be no problem...
...Otherwise we find no evidence for truth prevailing more often than false-hood, even where there is freedom...
...But the exhibition or depiction of it—or of other private acts—for the sake of prurient interest, or voyeuristic participation, is offensive nonetheless...
...Perhaps truth wins in an unlimited time span...
...Else writing would be silly...
...Similarly, society must make it possible for values to be generated and attained by imposing restraints on what would erode them...
...I have quoted Mill and Holmes for they have been most influential in forming the opinion so prevailing now among the college educated...
...Others because they like it...
...Now, if we call "true" a thought because it has been accepted, Holmes' argument is correct because circular...
...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...
...I propose here to discuss several cases where it is proper to restrict speech and expression beyond mere selection...
...Where individual freedom of expression is among the shared values, penalties still must limit it: unbounded freedom cannot produce the solidarity society needs...
...None has ever been preceded, or prepared, by such restrictions...
...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...
...The power of exclusion is not being abused, though the power of inclusion may be...
...Each makes its own selection...
...How does pornography endanger individuals or society...
...Nothing that is for public sale, nothing publicly accessible, can be fully private...
...So is the raising of pigs in Israel...
...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...
...Whether neurotic or not, the sex life of the advocate is irrelevant to the merits of what he advocates...
...Sometimes it is feared that outlawing pornography will produce aesthetic or literary harm...
...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...
...I have quoted Mill and Holmes for they have been most influential in forming the opinion so prevailing now among the college educated...
...But it does not matter, since the merits of an argument are independent of the merits, or motives, of those who urge it...
...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...
...We do not have emotional ties with insects...
...Even when they don't read them, girls are seduced by books, Gloria Steinem as much as Emma Bovary or Francesca da Rimini...
...When they do learn from experience it is usually too late...
...The slaughtering of cows is a crime in Hindu India...
...The question is not whether abridgment of any freedom is ever justified, but when it is...
...Such laws are the social analogue and adjunct to individual repressions and sublimations...
...Anyone who favors outlawing pornography is told that he is neurotic since he opposes sex and that this undermines his case...
...It is society that grants the right to pursue values—our freedom—and secures it by restraints...
...Each makes its own selection...
...It matters not at all whether such a loss would actually occur...
...We have most ties with those who share most of our values and attitudes, enough to form a society...
...Had he been as familiar with books as with girls, he would never have said that...
...Where the merits or demerits of goods and services are concerned, we do not trust the competition of the market to discover the truth...
...They would not become psychologically unnecessary if they were demonstrated to be rationally unneeded...
...But the decisions that emerge are not right, or the thoughts true, because they were freely accepted...
...I doubt it...
...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...
...And penalties raise the cost of what they penalize...
...Can societies cohere without a common outlook...
...Neither history nor logic supports him...
...the cessation of all feelings of consideration...
...most publications concerned with sex are for it...
...second, if there is such a way, public authorities are unlikely to find it...
...If people did not feel tempted, there would be no problem...
...Ideas and actions are not easily separated...
...Often the fear is projected on others: the fearful person may see them as uncontrolled, himself as a victim...
...Censorship proper, prior restraint of expression, is unconstitutional in the United States...
...Total safety is not of this world...
...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...
...We are more likely to be swamped than starved...
...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...
...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...
...The problem is not solved by removing the spirit and inviting the flesh...
...Yet, reading does influence, if not compel, people and it can precipitate action...
...That difference is generated by different ideas, attitudes, and fashions which are spread by speech, picture, and print...
...Ralph Waldo Emerson pointed out that the moral identity which we feel with other human beings is the basis of any society...
...Entry is reasonably free and easy...
...The question is not whether abridgment of any freedom is ever justified, but when it is...
...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...
...This is a high price to pay for Hitler's unabridged freedom, the effects of which were foreseeable...
...Some persons find pornography offensive because they dislike sex...
...Ideal "solutions" that ignore (or define away) the problems actual people have in the actua world are not helpful...
...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...
...Therefore, a defense of sex evades the question...
...But the government cannot be shown to do any better...
...The sexual nature of human beings has not changed in historical time...
...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...
...On the contrary, political oppression usually is a reaction, not to limitations, but to what is felt as excessive freedom...
...Freedom of expression certainly stares you in the face...
...Total safety is not of this world...
...These limitations of freedom cannot be avoided, for all rights are necessarily limited by other rights, and by the rights of others...
...This is a high price to pay for Hitler's unabridged freedom, the effects of which were foreseeable...
...Nothing that is for public sale, nothing publicly accessible, can be fully private...
...It pollutes the social atmosphere and affects bystanders just as pollution of the physical atmosphere does...
...Borderline cases occur in separating sight from blindness, but they do not preclude the distinction, which, in controversial cases, the courts exist to make...
...On the contrary, political oppression usually is a reaction, not to limitations, but to what is felt as excessive freedom...
...Freedom of expression should also be limited when it offends public decency...
...Pornography strikes at that basis...
...Objectors to this kind of limitation believe that a range of shared values is not necessary for a society...
...Such laws are the social analogue and adjunct to individual repressions and sublimations...
...It becomes empty, useless, and boring...
...Neither history nor logic supports him...
...Publishers and editors necessarily must select among manuscripts...
...They fear a loss of control...
Vol. 9 • December 1975 • No. 3
