Ah, the Ol' Kiddie Porn Smear

Radley Balko | May 21, 2008

In the midst of the otherwise straight-on write-up of yesterday's event at reason headquarters Matt Welch linked to below, The American Spectator's Philip Klein tosses in the following:

No doubt to the disappointment of some libertarians, all three candidates took a stand against kiddie porn.

Sure. And no doubt to the disappointment of some conservatives, all of the major GOP candidates for president this year opposed bombing abortion clinics and lynching black people.

Comments

jmr|5.21.08 @ 8:46AM|#

What REALLY gets 'em unhinged is your stuff on the racism of the drugwar. Because we all know the race-ratio in our jails is actually all a result of crazy preachers and old newsletters...
JMR

Episiarch|5.21.08 @ 8:51AM|#

I don't even get this smear. When are libertarians for kiddie porn? About the worst you can say is that we're against punishing people for having porn that portrays perfectly legal people as younger than they are.

What, the "libertarians are just Republicans who want to smoke weed" smear isn't good enough any more?

ed|5.21.08 @ 8:58AM|#

presidential candidates for president

Paging the department of redundancy department.

Sorry.

Matt Welch|5.21.08 @ 8:58AM|#

In contextual fairness, that was one of the questions asked to the candidates by an audience member, who wanted to test the outer limits of their libertarianness by seeing if they would legally allow behavior they personally found beyond the pale. As memory serves, it was whether they would allow the legal distribution -- and specifically not production -- of child porn. (And also whether they would allow each and every drug to be legalized.)

|5.21.08 @ 9:07AM|#

Huh. Well, I'm a libertarian, and I thoroughly oppose child porn. I can even set aside my largely absolutist feelings about free speech to accept the prior restraint policy. For once, "to protect the children" seems a legitimate argument.

Just thinking about this a bit, is it illegal to distribute snuff films? Similar issue, it seems to me.

Abdul|5.21.08 @ 9:07AM|#

As libertarians always say: "A society is judged by the condition of its prostitots."

|5.21.08 @ 9:14AM|#

And no doubt to the disappointment of some conservatives, all of the major GOP presidential candidates for president this year opposed bombing abortion clinics and lynching black people.

Not to mention trolling for hairy gay butt sex in an airport shitter.

T|5.21.08 @ 9:19AM|#

I thought libertarians used the blood of child sex workers to make crackers. Or am I getting my libels confused?

ed|5.21.08 @ 9:22AM|#

"to protect the children" seems a legitimate argument

What about those children who are members of a religion whose adherents force them into incestuous marriage and pregnancy? Off limits?

|5.21.08 @ 9:22AM|#

Not to mention trolling for hairy gay butt sex in an airport shitter.

Considering how powerful the connection between smell and arousal is, do you think Craig gets a little hard every time he takes a dump?

|5.21.08 @ 9:23AM|#

T: You're thinking of the Protocols of the Elders of Rothbard.

Matt Moore|5.21.08 @ 9:28AM|#

ed - No, it's not off-limits. But I don't think there's much proof that that was going on at Yearning for Zion.

Abdul|5.21.08 @ 9:37AM|#

Sugarfree,

I know you were only joking, but when I worked with juvenile delinquents, a child psychologist warned us stop kids from "roughing up the suspect" while in the bathroom lest the connection between bathrooms and sex turn the kids into copraphiliacs.

|5.21.08 @ 9:43AM|#

Abdul,

That's fairly interesting. I wonder if that has any basis, or if the child psychologist was just making shit up.

(A run-in with a idiot child psychologist during my parent's non-traumatic divorce is one of the foundational pillars of my extreme antiauthoritarianism.)

|5.21.08 @ 9:50AM|#

Didn't Mary Ruwart get into the (admittedly small time, parochial libertarian) news for not necessarily opposing kiddie porn? I thought that was what Klein was referring to.

|5.21.08 @ 9:58AM|#

Yeah, it's a dig on Ruwart. Too bad she wasn't there.

|5.21.08 @ 9:58AM|#

Abdul -- small point but I think you mean coprophiliac (sexual satisfaction from excretement...ewwww!). Copraphiliac, if my etymology is correct, would mean you are Coo-Coo for coconuts. And Capraphiliac would mean you get off on It's a Wonderful Life. :)

|5.21.08 @ 10:02AM|#

"And no doubt to the disappointment of some conservatives, all of the major GOP candidates for president this year opposed bombing abortion clinics and lynching black people."

Has to be one of the funnier lines I've read in the past week or two.

Regards,
TDL

|5.21.08 @ 10:07AM|#

What about those children who are members of a religion whose adherents force them into incestuous marriage and pregnancy? Off limits?

Nope. Same laws apply. Go right ahead and prosecute the guilty parties, if you can make a case.

Which so far the State of Texas hasn't even tried to do.

Abdul|5.21.08 @ 10:08AM|#

sixstring--I defer to your greater expertise on the matter.

Sugarfree--I really don't know if the child psychologist was making it up or not. At any rate, we pretty much had a "don't flap the sheets too hard, don't tell" policy towards teenage baitin'.

Taktix&#174|5.21.08 @ 10:19AM|#

"Well, I don't know who else could give people health care," Gravel said. "Government is like a tool, a tool for our collective activity."

A case of the pot calling the kettle "black" here...

Seriously, why is this guy allowed to hang around the LP? Does he even know how to spell libertarian?

|5.21.08 @ 10:25AM|#

If we can allow old Confederates to hang around, I don't see any problem with keeping Gravel, (if only for entertainment value).

|5.21.08 @ 10:33AM|#

Mike Gravel is the exactly the type of candidate who could light a fire under the LP.

He's someone who could really make a splash.

|5.21.08 @ 10:45AM|#

He's someone who could really make a splash.

After we toss him off the Tallahatchie bridge.

question|5.21.08 @ 11:04AM|#

who was the ass who asked about kiddie porn anyway? did anyone know him?

|5.21.08 @ 11:26AM|#

"Well, I don't know who else could give people health care," Gravel said.

Umm, doctors? Nurses? Hospitals?

|5.21.08 @ 11:26AM|#

Mike Gravel is the exactly the type of candidate who could light a fire under the LP.

Causing libertarians to flee their now-burning party.

The Wine Commonsewer|5.21.08 @ 11:38AM|#

........ all of the major GOP candidates for president this year opposed bombing abortion clinics and lynching black people.

ZING!

LarryA|5.21.08 @ 11:40AM|#

Mike Gravel is the exactly the type of candidate who could light a fire under the LP. He's someone who could really make a splash.

Whereupon you end up with dirty water on a dead fire.

About the worst you can say is that we're against punishing people for having porn that portrays perfectly legal people as younger than they are.

There are also the computer-generated image issue and the teenagers videoing themselves issue.

|5.21.08 @ 12:53PM|#

When one of the LP presidential candidates comes out against legally prohibiting the distribution of kiddie porn, it's isn't really a dirty trick to give the other candidates a chance to reiterate their disagreement in public.

And that disagreement certainly is to the disappointment of at least one group of Libertarians, it appears. The American Spectator called this one right down the middle, I think.

|5.21.08 @ 1:01PM|#

I don't even get this smear. When are libertarians for kiddie porn?

Uh, that's the whole point of a smear--to make a baseless, sensational charge against an opponent.

What it really accomplishes is to tell you what the smearing person (and perhaps his intended audience) really think of you. It also signals fear. And if the American Spectator crowd are scared enough to actually smear libertarians, then I'm happy.

|5.21.08 @ 1:05PM|#

When are libertarians for kiddie porn?

When someone makes a profit on it?

I keed, I keed!

Metal Messiah|5.21.08 @ 4:47PM|#

To the conservative christian mindset, the only difference between child pornography and adult pornography is a legal technicality.

Mr Anonymous|5.21.08 @ 5:09PM|#

No doubt to the disappointment of some progressives, all three candidates took a stand against convicting all US men of pre-rape.

No doubt to the disappointment of some conservatives, all three candidates took a stand against repealing the law of gravity.

No doubt to the disappointment of some Greens, all three candidates took a stand against affecting human extinction.

No doubt to the disappointment of some Constitutionals, all three candidates took a stand against ferreting out the Illuminati from among the ranks of Mexican immigrants and those Gypsies that always offer to re-pave driveways.

I could play this game all day.