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Library of Congress Opens Records of Anti-Comic Book Shrink
eldavojohn writes "Some light is being shone on comic book history today as the Library of Congress opens up the 222 boxes of a German psychiatrist's evidence and papers against comic books. Dr. Fredric Wertham is well known by comic book fans as the author of Seduction of the Innocent, a bestselling book linking comic books and juvenile delinquency — leading to a full blown congressional investigation (some say witch hunt) of the comic book industry. Wertham was long involved with criminal trials before campaigning against comic books and promoting industry and government censorship for children. Ars adds a little more context for the younger crowd and notes that he later tried to move against television violence but couldn't find the publisher backing he had against comic books."
Government intervention is always bad.
There is the problem. I know a lot of people reject propositions with a boring and overly-simple argument of "government is too big," but that doesn't mean that all people who are in favor of a small [federal] government take that route, and it doesn't mean that they think that all government intervention is bad. You're unecessarily reducing a viewpoint to a ridiculous. Claiming that those who are against "government expansion" are in favor of anarchy (if government intervention is always bad, then anarchy would be good, because it would be no government intervention).
Of course, you are probably just exaggerating to make your point, which is probably what the people you're arguing against are doing, too... meaning we're all arguing against exaggerated opinions of the other side, which means we're not even really arguing about something real ;)
I'm a "small government" sort of guy. Didn't Romney do the health care thing in MA? Isn't that "government intervention?" Doesn't he still claim it was a good idea? Of course, that was at the state level, not the federal level... but still.
I suppose I'm nit-picking. But the exaggerations on both sides make any sort of meaningful political discussion impossible. Democrats, according to some Republicans, quite literally want to drive America into the ground and give our land over to Muslim countries. Republicans, according to some Democrats, want to literally milk the people's money out of them through corporations and wouldn't mind if [insert large corporation] actually ran the country. Usually, these are supported by huge jumps from a given action to a motive. Actions are easy to see. Motives are pretty difficult.
As an example, from my own ideological POV's typical party member, "Obamacare" is clearly an attempt to set up a completely socialist government in America. It's also, clearly, an attempt to ruin America and give it to Iran. It's also clearly an attempt for Democrats to gain more federal power. Of course, some of those clear motives are rather mutually exclusive, but we'll ignore that. The action that caused all this was a health care bill, but we clearly know the motive behind it.
The same goes for Democrats. They clearly know the motives behind Repuplicans blocking a given bill (it is undoubtedly an evil and nefarious motive, like wanting to get more money from corporate lobbyists, or wanting to ensure they get re-elected, etc). My whole point? We are so caught up in ascribing motives that we can't even argue about the real substance - the legislation itself.
And, to wrap up, exaggerations about POV's - including "small government" folks being against any government intervention at all, which then boils any discussion down to "well what about [something the government does that is necessary]???!?! you insensitive clod!" and including "all 'socialists' want to control ever single area of your life just like Russian communism!" - is a part of the can't-have-rational-discussion problems...
IMO, of course. ;)