Thursday, August 22, 2013

   We live in the day of the libertarian. Tonight, I hear his voice on Facebook. "Alcohol prohibition was a disaster," he says. "Drug prohibition is even worse."
   Is it spin, or is it fact? For they suggest that if I oppose them, I am opposing freedom.
   Tonight, I also think again of the three teenagers in Oklahoma, who gunned down the Australian student for the just thrill of it, just to see someone die. And, I think of the Australian's right to life, and of how good government has a responsibility to protect.
   As much as any other measurement, the measurement of government is in how well it protects its citizens.
   I think of a social media site belonging to one of the three teenagers, filled with music and rhetoric on violence, and sex and drugs. I think how even libertarians should understand these influences did play a role in the teenagers doing what they did.
   Do I wonder whether we should outlaw some music? Surely, I do. I wonder if in another day we would have been quick to outlaw it. Back in the day when we outlawed selling cigarettes to teenagers, would we not have been as quick to outlaw selling to children music that calls for the death of others, and violent video games that roll out death as a game?
   I do not know. I stop and wonder if by outlawing cigarettes to children, the children only turn to them more. But, I do not know. Perhaps, it is that they take them less than they would if they were legal.
   At any rate, I'm tending towards thinking throwing so much violence before our children's eyes is unwise, including the violence found in the theaters. Why would we subject our children to these things, in their formative years?
   We do not leave the child free to run out and get pornography, or to smoke cigarettes, or to drink. Why is it now that violence has become such a commodity, that we spin the argument that we cannot deprive them of it, for to do so would take away freedom?

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