Are We Really Gonna Do Another War on Porn?
Conservatives are wrong on policy, and really wrong on facts
You may have been minding your own business the past 72 hours, but our illiberal-con friends certainly were not. On Friday, four members of Congress sent a hysterical letter to Attorney General William Barr asking him to "declare the prosecution of obscene pornography a criminal justice priority," and "bring prosecutions against the major producers and distributors of such material." Then conservative commentator Matt Walsh spent the whole damn weekend demanding jail sentences and denouncing libertarians for being all libertarian-y.
On today's Reason Roundtable podcast, editors Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and Matt Welch unpack the porn prohibitionists' phony statistics and openly big-government philosophies, while introducing some pragmatic considerations that hobbled previous conservative crackdowns during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. We also talk about lessons from today's big Washington Post "Afghanistan Papers" project, field still more listener questions (because of our annual Webathon, which you should totally donate to before it's too late!), and explore the deepest ocean cracks with James Cameron and Randy Newman.
Audio production by Ian Keyser and Regan Taylor.
'Infados' by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Relevant links from the show:
"Pornography Is Protected by the First Amendment," by Damon Root
"The Fight Conservatives Are Having Over Theocracy and Classical Liberalism Obscures How Beaten Their Movement Is," by Nick Gillespie
"Anti-Porn Republicans Haven't Gone Anywhere," by Elizabeth Nolan Brown
"Rick Santorum: 'Federal Obscenity Laws Should Be Vigorously Enforced,'" by Mike Riggs
"Reason.tv: All Charges Dismissed! John Stagliano Reacts Outside the Courthouse," by Reason Staff
"Stagliano on Obscenity, Justice, and His Upcoming Animated Video on the Federal Reserve," by Matt Welch
"Xtreme Measures," by Greg Beato
"Reagan's Smutstompers," by Martin Wooster
"The Government Has Been Lying About Afghanistan All Along," by Elizabeth Nolan Brown
"Trump Just Can't Quit Afghanistan," by Matt Welch
"In Afghanistan, We Persist in Futility," by Steve Chapman
"The Forever War in Afghanistan," by Jesse Walker
"Obama Brainwashes the Public on Afghanistan," by Sheldon Richman
"Knitting Afghanistan," by Brian Doherty
"You Asked Reason Editors Anything. Watch How We Answered!" By Matt Welch