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Court on Video Games: Less Cleavage, More Carnage
John Landis said, "R is when you bare a woman's breast, PG is when you cut it off." That is apparently now also the law of the land regarding video games, according to the Supreme Court's June 27th decision (PDF) overturning a California law that banned sales of violent video games to minors. I'm glad the Supreme Court struck down the law, but reading over the decision, I had the odd feeling that even though I agreed with the majority's conclusion, the actual arguments made by the dissenters made more sense, primarily because of the hypocrisy of the majority in treating sex as more taboo than violence.
The majority opinion, written by Scalia, has already been widely quoted as a ringing defense of free speech:
"Reading Dante is unquestionably more cultured and intellectually edifying than playing Mortal Kombat. But these cultural and intellectual differences are not constitutional ones. Crudely violent video games, tawdry TV shows, and cheap novels and magazines are no less forms of speech than The Divine Comedy, and restrictions upon them must survive strict scrutiny..."
But Scalia continues to believe that the government does have the right to ban the sale of nudity and sexuality to minors (as decided in the Supreme Court's 1968 Ginsberg v. New York decision), just not violence. So he kept qualifying statements like the one above by adding "except for pornography", like a judicial version of the fortune cookie "in bed" game:
"[A]s a general matter, . . . government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content... There are of course exceptions. These limited areas, such as obscenity... represent well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise any Constitutional problem."
...
"Speech that is neither obscene as to youths nor subject to some other legitimate proscription cannot be suppressed solely to protect the young from ideas or images that a legislative body thinks unsuitable for them."
So he's continuing the Supreme Court's tradition of carving out of a First Amendment exception for sex, but won't make one for gratuitous violence. I would be against banning either type of content, but if I were forced to ban one of the two, I would definitely pick violence. Wouldn't you?
As Steven Breyer wrote in his dissent:
"But what sense does it make to forbid selling to a 13-year-old boy a magazine with an image of a nude woman, while protecting a sale to that 13-year-old of an interactive video game in which he actively, but virtually, binds and gags the woman, then tortures and kills her? What kind of First Amendment would permit the government to protect children by restricting sales of that extremely violent video game only when the woman -- bound, gagged, tortured, and killed -- is also topless?"
Well, he's right, isn't he? Except he misses the point that perhaps the remedy is not to ban violent video games, but to overturn the precedent that photos of topless women are harmful.
Alito seemed to agree with Breyer, when he wrote in a decision joined by Roberts:
"Victims by the dozens are killed with every imaginable implement, including machine guns, shotguns, clubs, hammers, axes, swords, and chainsaws. Victims are dismembered, decapitated, disemboweled, set on fire, and chopped into little pieces. They cry out in agony and beg for mercy... The objective of one game is to rape a mother and her daughters; in another, the goal is to rape Native American women."
(Alito was technically not dissenting, because he agreed that the current law was impermissibly vague, but filed a separate opinion because he was at pains to emphasize that he thought some future law against violent video games might be constitutional.) The implication seems clear: "If we can ban some things for minors — like pornography — then good God, can't we ban this stuff too?"
Scalia, in his majority opinion, responds to Alito's description of game violence: "Justice Alito recounts all these disgusting video games in order to disgust us — but disgust is not a valid basis for restricting expression." But this is just hypocritical — because Scalia, throughout his own decision, kept deferring to the Ginsberg Supreme Court ruling, which said that the government could ban porn sales to minors if it depicted sex acts in way that the "average person" would consider "patently offensive with respect to what is suitable for minors" (along with some other criteria). In other words, if it causes disgust.
Breyer and Alito also made similar arguments to each other on another reasonable-sounding point — that industry self-regulation might not last long, now that the law has been struck down. As Alito wrote:
"The Court does not mention the fact that the industry adopted this system in response to the threat of federal regulation, Brief for Activision Blizzard, Inc., as Amicus Curiae 7-10, a threat that the Court's opinion may now be seen as largely eliminating. Nor does the Court acknowledge that compliance with this system at the time of the enactment of the California law left much to be desired — or that future enforcement may decline if the video-game industry perceives that any threat of government regulation has vanished."
Breyer agreed:
"And the industry could easily revert back to the substantial noncompliance that existed in 2004, particularly after today's broad ruling reduces the industry's incentive to police itself."
This sounds more realistic than Scalia's recitation of the video game industry party line:
"The video-game industry has in place a voluntary rating system designed to inform consumers about the content of games... This system does much to ensure that minors cannot purchase seriously violent games on their own, and that parents who care about the matter can readily evaluate the games their children bring home."
What do you want to bet that Breyer and Alito are right, and enforcement of the rating system will decline now?
Compare this with another case, when Communications Decency Act of 1996 (essentially banning the "seven dirty words" on the Internet) was struck down in 1997 at least in part because a "less restrictive means" existed for censoring content in the home — parental blocking software. I didn't like blocking software much, but as a statement of fact, it existed, and was a less restrictive means than the law. The crucial difference there was that parents who used blocking software, weren't using it in response to a government threat of legislation, they were using it because they wanted to, and didn't stop using it after the law was struck down. There's no reason to think the same is true for industry self-applied video game ratings.
Finally, Breyer (but not Alito) rejected the argument that the California law should be struck down for vagueness, arguing that it was no more vague than laws against selling pornography minors, which the court had upheld:
"Comparing the language of California's statute (set forth supra, at 1-2) with the language of New York's statute (set forth immediately above), it is difficult to find any vagueness-related difference. Why are the words "kill," "maim," and "dismember" any more difficult to understand than the word "nudity?" ... California only departed from the Miller formulation [the Supreme Court case that defined obscenity] in two significant respects: It substituted the word "deviant" for the words "prurient" and "shameful," and it three times added the words "for minors." The word "deviant" differs from "prurient" and "shameful," but it would seem no less suited to defining and narrowing the reach of the statute."
Well, I think he's right. They're all just words, and they don't have crystal clear boundaries, but you pretty much know what they mean, and there's no reason why one group of words is more vague than the other. (In fact, in a 2008 article I argued that you could measure scientifically the vagueness of a law — just show the law to different test subjects, along with some made-up scenarios, and ask whether those scenarios violated the law or not. I'm quite confident that if you applied that test to these two different laws, you would measure about the same level of "vagueness".)
Again, I don't accept the justices' premise that the government has any business banning the sale of either sexual or violent content. But if you're going to grant the premise that they can and should, then Alito and/or Breyer seem to have made better arguments than the majority on at least those three points: That violence probably deserves less constitutional protection than sex, that the industry isn't likely to keep regulating itself if they no longer think they have to, and there's no reason that "kill" and "maim" are any more vague than "nudity".
(By the way, when I say the "dissenters sounded more reasonable", I am not including Clarence Thomas, whose entire solo dissent was devoted to research showing that the Founding Fathers did not believe people under 18 had First Amendment rights at all. If Clarence Thomas thought really hard, could he think of any other category of people who were denied full civil rights in the 1700s, and hence why we wouldn't want to apply that standard today?)
Fortunately, the majority did get the most important point right, which is that studies do not show a causal relationship between video game playing and real-life acts of violence. As Scalia wrote:
"The State's evidence is not compelling. California relies primarily on the research of Dr. Craig Anderson and a few other research psychologists whose studies purport to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children. These studies have been rejected by every court to consider them, and with good reason: They do not prove that violent video games cause minors to act aggressively (which would at least be a beginning). Instead, "[n]early all of the research is based on correlation, not evidence of causation, and most of the studies suffer from significant, admitted flaws in methodology." Video Software Dealers Assn. 556 F. 3d, at 964. They show at best some correlation between exposure to violent entertainment and minuscule real-world effects, such as children's feeling more aggressive or making louder noises in the few minutes after playing a violent game than after playing a nonviolent game."
Unfortunately, Scalia lacked the nerve to say that this point should have been the only point that mattered, in a society where freedom is the default unless there's a good reason to the contrary. Because the logical consequence of that, would have been that since the "evidence" for the harmful effects of pornography is even weaker, then the government has no business banning that, either.
The problem constraining all nine justices is that they felt bound by the prior Ginsberg ruling making it permissible to ban sales of pornography to minors, so their options were limited to (a) striking down the video game law while ignoring the hypocrisy of continuing to ban pornography, or (b) pointing out that violent video games are probably at least as distasteful. This ignores the possibility that they could have just (c) overturned their prior ruling, as they have done many times before.
If I were a justice writing for the majority, my whole opinion would be:
Well, we can only make an exception to the First Amendment if there's solid evidence of real harm, and there is no scientifically valid evidence of harm here, so the law violates the First Amendment and is struck down. Oh, and that goes for Ginsberg too, next time it comes up. How much did you guys pay for law school again?
Unfortunately, Obama has said that he's looking for Supreme Court candidates that display "empathy", and what I said would probably hurt the other justices' feelings, so don't hold your breath for my being nominated.
Perhaps it's because Americans are violent but not sexy?
Don't you know, a woman's body is dirty to most of these objectors?
Genuinely America, sort yourselves out, this is some third world behaviour here.
And it all started with the Hays codes in the 1930s. Get your religion-based censorship out of my TV and radio broadcasts already.
I thought a major part of the decision was that other forms of entertainment are not similarly restricted. Violence in films and TV are not subject to the same sort of law, and the decision was based on that discrepancy in the restriction of speech. However, those forms of media are restricted when it comes to sexual content, so a similar restriction can be applied to video games. This is of course separate from whether or not it *should* be applied to any of them. Isn't that the job of parenting?
Anyway, it seems as though the court was trying to just align the law with current precedent, and clarify that video games are speech like other formats, instead of getting into a major brouhaha over the issue restricting sexual content in any media which is outside of the scope of this case.
There is no obscenity exemption in the Constitution. I've looked. The Supreme Court invented the obscenity exemption. Only Congress is supposed to have the power to create law, and they may only modify the Constitution after ratification by the states. The Miller test hasn't passed any of these hurdles so it is quite plainly unconstitutional.
This is an absolutely crystal clear case of activist judges legislating from the bench.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Stunning hypocrisy by supposed "adults". It's a symptom of the garbage they grew up with, though.
America really needs a cultural shift so that everyone is taught that:
1) Violence is bad.
&
2) Sex is good.
A good starting point for all this is to vilify the right-wing Christian culture that preaches violence over sex. America doesn't need a religion from the middle-east in its land. There are plenty of Native American religions one can choose from, both violent and non-violent, should anyone feels the need for religion.
American citizens have a long and well publicised record of being shocked and upset by seeing the human body, while being more relaxed about exposing their children to acts of simulated violence. Guns ok, bare bodies not ok.
When Janet Jackson showed a nipple in a show on prime time tv at the superbowl, the USA took to the streets and threatened to riot for this shameful behaviour that would damage their kids for life. Over in Europe, people laughed: you can see posters of half naked people on billboards selling perfume and the like on the way to the shops, no big deal. Sometimes models are completely naked in posters. Europeans are more worried about exposing their children to violence.
Different places, different cultures. Violence is ok in the USA, sex is ok in Europe. You take your choice and live where you feel comfortable I suppose...
I used to work at EB, and I always thought it was sadly funny when some parent would get offended at some very crude/pixelated nudity... But be perfectly OK with wholesale slaughter.
Seriously.
Most people, at some point in their lives, see a naked body. Most people have sex. That's generally considered to be a good thing. Aren't parents stereotypically bugging their children for grandkids after they get married?
Most people, on the other hand, try to avoid getting dismembered with a chainsaw.
And yet... According to the way we rate our media... Chainsaw dismemberment is apparently more acceptable.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
It will sort itself out.
America is still, to this day, trying to shake off centuries of puritan tradition. But we're doing it. Each generation is a bit more socially sane than the last one.
we gave all colors of skin and then both sexes the right to vote. we then struck down institutionalized racism (as much as possible) and followed up by changing social attitudes towards race (Again, as much as possible. it's a slow process, gotta wait for old racists to die off). We are slowly giving people of all sexual orientations the right to legally marry anybody they so choose, and while we're at it we're slowly allowing people to legally fuck in any way they so choose as long as it's consentual (you'd be amazed at what's still on the books out there). Talks are in progress about how we, as a society, can make sure as few people are fucked over by health care as possible, while at the same time -finally- opening up discussions on how to decriminalize posession and use of recreational drugs while assisting addicts with recovery instead of imprisoning them.
Example. it's a sign of progress that when a year or two ago some southern judge refused to issue a marriage license a white woman and a black man, it is viewed with outrage across the country instead of "why is this news". We're working on changing things, we're working on it.
I'm sure that my grandchildren will look at me and say "you guys were still doing WHAT to -insert social group here- in your day? Wow what were you thinking?" and they'll probably be right.
whereas sex is dirty and shameful.
At least when it's done right, it is.
I'm not the poster, but I would imagine that watching sexually explicit material (sexy video games, porn, Night Court) would put people in a state of arousal, and thus induce them to have sex. The question is, however, why is that a bad thing? If my partner and I consume sexually explicit material, and then we go have sex, who's problem is it?
And before it gets mentioned, I think it would be a huge stretch to state that consuming sexually explicit material leads to rape.
No matter what you think about sex vs violence, that isn't what this case was about. This case was about whether there should be special rules for video games! If California had simply passed a law against selling depictions of gratuitous violence to children, that would have been a whole different matter (and an unlikely law in the land of Hollywood). Do we really need special, separate rules for each new medium? I don't think so. Consistency is the thing! The Supremes considered the question of whether video games needed separate rules, and concluded that there was no evidence they did. If you don't like violence in media, petition for a ban on violence in media, not violence in video games!
http://www.thedailytransmission.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Alabama_Special.jpg Relevant.
Palm trees and 8
Have you actually read the old testament? The very first commandment that God gives to the world is "be fruitful and multiply."
Palm trees and 8
Yes, but it's a long, slow process. Not helped along when some of those "social groups" seem to just not get it (refer also to California's prop 8 vote).
FTA: "[...]Clarence Thomas, whose entire solo dissent was devoted to research showing that the Founding Fathers did not believe people under 18 had First Amendment rights at all. If Clarence Thomas thought really hard, could he think of any other category of people who were denied full civil rights in the 1700s, and hence why we wouldn't want to apply that standard today?)"
we then struck down institutionalized racism
No we didn't; we just hide it better now. In black communities in America, it is common for 1 out of every 5 men to be imprisoned -- in some cases, the proportion is as high as 1 out of every 3. That is right now, in 2011.
opening up discussions on how to decriminalize posession and use of recreational drugs
We have opened up talks about how to decriminalize possession of one particular drug, marijuana. During the past year, at least five drugs were made illegal without any congressional action at all -- the DEA simply declared the drugs to be illegal (they are required to go through a formal scheduling process by the end of this year to keep the drugs illegal). We are nowhere near the end of the war on drugs; in fact, it is intensifying.
I'm sure that my grandchildren will look at me and say "you guys were still doing WHAT to -insert social group here- in your day? Wow what were you thinking?" and they'll probably be right.
More likely, they'll say, "You were allowed to speak out against the police back then?!"
Palm trees and 8
I'm talking about something important to me here, and I'm not eager to be attacked and labeled because of it. I seriously considered posting AC because the comments so far look like a roving lynch mob...prove me wrong.
As an aside, I believe strongly that the first amendment is a good idea. I do not agree with the law which was pushed by California. I play lots of video games.
I'm not trying to talk about that, though, I'm trying to give my insight about the repeated comments of 'How can you complain about sex when clearly you don't care about violence'.
There is a gap between the person that I want to be and the person that I am. I absolutely believe that everything you see and think and do is slowly turning you into a different person. I try to choose entertainment that doesn't move me further from the person that I want to be.
Encountering profanity makes me want to swear more. I do not appreciate this.
Sexual depictions makes me want to have sex with someone, even if they are not my wife. I do not appreciate this.
Violent depictions currently do not make me want to go kill something. I therefore don't account it as particularly damaging...perhaps I am wrong.
The idea that my discomforts should change what you get to have is one that I'm unclear on my opinions towards. For the purposes of this post I'm only trying to demonstrate that people can put different weights on different types of content and not be stupid.
Please stop acting like everyone who does so is stupid.
Gah...forgot to unclick post anonymously.
You are awash in a sea of fiercely stated opinions. Obvious exits are: 'File->Quit', 'Reply', and 'Page Down'.
Great photo. It summarizes with zero words the hypocrisy of our culture:
- Vibrator == bad, dirty, outlawed to be shown on tv.
- Assault rifle == okay, and shown on primetime.
In reality they should BOTH be allowed in our arts. It's free speech and neither should be any more "censored" than the other.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
where *obscene* violence is more acceptable than completely *normal* sexuality. It's beyond me. WTF?
No, it's not illegal for a judge to say that in Europe. Sure, he'd have been censured, but not censored. Also, swastikas are not censored in Germany (as long as you're not marching under one, trying to get people to commit genocide). 24 wasn't banned anywhere, that I'm aware of.
So I have no idea what you're on about, and more importantly it seems neither do you. When you try to defend "America" against "America bashing", at least get your facts straight. All you did was show you are ignorant of Europe, and didn't actually provide support for "America" in any way at all.
So you'd rather pay even more to fix the repercussions of people not having healthcare, which do impact your daily life, than to pay taxes to ensure said repercussions are as minimal as possible. Great logic, sparky! You're a beacon of hope in a troubled world!
Sex is taboo, violence and carnage is great, I guess they never watch TV in America?
One point that is often overlooked is "Which is more likely: that your son or daughter will engage in sex or violence?"
I think most people who want more censorship aren't opposed to -sex-, they're opposed to their children having it. They know their children are going through puberty and know that having a sex drive is normal, whereas committing murder is less likely. They might think that depictions of sex will make their children more likely to have sex, whereas depictions of violence will probably not nudge their children towards violence. That's not entirely unreasonable. Watching porn makes me want to have sex. Watching violence does not make me want to kill.
I gather that american parents in general -are- more squeamish about their children actually having sex than european parents are. That type of thing dies hard though. My parents and I have only had very awkward conversations about sex. I have no template for having a non-awkward conversation with my children if and when I have them. I laugh at my parents for giving me "the talk" several years after my classmates had already given me the talk (albeit full of errors) but I'll likely end up bungling it as well when it's my turn. I was always annoyed when my family would be watching a movie and a sex scene would come up, and my mother would fast forward, but she still does it now that I'm an adult and now I realize it would be very uncomfortable to watch people getting it on with my mother in the room.
In other words, being squeamish about your children's sex lives is to some degree an inherited thing, and isn't easy to erase. We don't want to think of our children as sexual beings, a consequence of that is to try to ignore it. We -don't- think of our children as violent, since we naturally assume our kids aren't psychopaths. And for the most part, they're not.
Just to be clear though, this is in no way advocating government censorship of either sex or violence just because of my squeamishness. If I'm uncomfortable with my kids seeing sex in entertainment, I'll either regulate them directly or get over it. Having the government crack down to make it so you don't have to discuss sex with your children is truly idiotic and indefensible.
we then struck down institutionalized racism
No we didn't; we just hide it better now. In black communities in America, it is common for 1 out of every 5 men to be imprisoned -- in some cases, the proportion is as high as 1 out of every 3. That is right now, in 2011.
Are you entirely sure that is due to hidden racism, and not at all to do with a self-perpetuating "racial" (more self-enforced social grouping in my experience) culture of gang-related crime-glorified peer pressure, music, and environment?
Or are you suggestion a bunch of racist good ole boys sat around one day saying "Well, we can't hang the black man no more, so we'll give him some rap music talking about 'OG', distribute some blue and red bandanas, and they'll give us every excuse in the world to lock them up and legally beat the shit out of them"? I'm really not sure that's the way it worked.
Anecdotally, I know way more than 5 black men, and not a single one to my knowledge has ever been to prison. My friends are the exceptions? Granted, they were suburban kids, not urban ones. Racism only exists in the cities?
Actually, it is mainly because of the war on drugs -- black men are routinely arrested for selling and possessing marijuana, cocaine, and PCP. It is true that white people could also theoretically be targeted, but the enforcement tends to be heavier in black areas, and the penalty for crack (which is the popular form of cocaine in black communities) is much higher than the penalty for powder cocaine.
As for the racist motivations of the war on drugs, that is a historical fact. Congress was told that marijuana caused white women to want to have sex with black men. Congress was told that black men who used cocaine became lunatics, with improved accuracy with a pistol and a desire to rape white women. Congress was told that crack cocaine was a black man's drug.
As for your suburban friends, they are indeed an exception; the dozen or so black men you know do not constitute a statistically significant sample.
Palm trees and 8
Anyway, it seems he changed his mind sometime around Noah
Yes, when solomon speaks of the beauty of his wife's breasts in "song of solomon", clearly the language is symbolic and hes not talking about sex at all.
it was pretty much established who has the right to kill and who should be the ones killed and then the killing commenced.
If one accepts the premise that there is a creator, and that there were certain people who violated his commands, and that said creator was enacting judgement on them, it begins to make sense to understand why the israelites were commanded to begin their conquest. I do not recall however any time where it was established that "you may always kill these groups of outsiders, and not these"; the command as I recall it was "you shall not murder". The difference? Judgement (or, if you prefer, a commanded enactment of justice) is not murder, and if said creator exists, it would certainly have the authority to issue such judgements.
If, of course, you want to commit the fallacy of rejecting half of the bible's premises and then using said rejection as the groundwork for disproving the remainder, feel free; I certainly dont intend to get into a discussion with someone who is going to start out with a rejection of logic.
Actually, we exchanged one form of institutional racism for another.. IMHO, a true lack of institutional racism would be defined by no mention of race in law or policy, except to prohibit discrimination on that basis. A true lack of racism would be basing hiring decisions strictly on merit. The counter-argument is that you need to promote historicly oppressed peoples, and the counter-argument to that is that by promoting them on the basis of something other than merit you create a disincentive for them to advance as a class.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I live in Texas, where it is not abnormal for people to go to church on Sunday hung over from the night at the strip club on Saturday.
In Dallas, we have some of the best and most famous strip clubs in the world, and we also have more churches per capita that most other areas.
Is this hypocrisy? Undoubtedly. However, I think there's are major cultural undercurrents that the rest of the world, and in the case of Texas, the rest of the country misses. I've lived all over the US, and interestingly (to me) I've found Texas to be the least judgmental and most accepting of any place I've lived, including many "liberal" places like California (San Diego) and Oregon (Portland).
This probably challenges a lot of closely held beliefs by a lot of people in the US and around the world, and I get that. But the fact is, I live in a "conservative" small town in Texas, and when I'm done work today I'm going to go have a beer at the local red-neck bar, a cool little place that is filled with simple folks, has Big Buck Hunter tournaments, and plays country/western non-stop. A bar that's owned by an amazing lesbian couple, and had a flamboyantly gay cook for years. And everyone in my town loves the place, the owners and the cook.
A lot of folks (as I was, at first) are really put off by this kind of hypocrisy. Why not just loosen up, and drop the pretense? Why pretend to be a good, church-going Christian, when you have no problem dropping a grand in a strip club, or doing all kinds of other wild things?
What I've come to realize, after living in Texas for several years, is that it is all about manners. In Texas, we don't like to offend folks, we keep our private business private, and it is no one's business what happens behind closed doors. I think the perceived hypocrisy of the porn v/s guns debate has a lot to do with this mentality, and I think this is a sentiment that shared (to various degrees) around the US.
Folks here don't want personal business put out in public, and nudity is considered very personal business here. Guns, however aren't at all. One of our favorite pastimes is going to the shooting range, or out to the ranch, and putting a couple hundred rounds into targets.
Many around the world are mystified by this kind of mentality, and I understand that - it's a huge cultural difference, but the thing that's important to realize is that while it is very different here, it isn't bad. In fact, Texas is the most amazing place I've lived in my life. I love it here, I love the people here, and I've learned a lot about being a gentleman and proper manners since I've moved here - things that really don't get much attention in some other parts of the US (like where I grew up).
It is easy to point a finger and criticize us, when you don't have any understanding of our culture, and from an outside perspective, it must seem confusing. But honestly, would you do the same thing to monks in Tibet? Or tribes in Africa? No, you'd respect that they have a vastly different culture - one that works for them, and you'd respect that (most likely).
I would request the same consideration from you and others for the US (and from others in the US for Texas). The reason I think it is so hard for people to do this is because (on the surface) western cultures are so similar. It is easy for us to look at Native Americans and identify the vast cultural differences, but not quite so much with Europe/US. It is important to realize, however, that those differences really are there, and the cultural gap is just as vast.
For those who are interested in learning a little bit more (good and bad) about how things work in Texas, I recommend the movie "The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas". Aside from being a great movie, it is based on real events, and (in my experience) is pretty spot on with the way people are in Texas. I can't speak to several other of the "conservative" states, because I haven't lived in them all, but I suspect that they have pretty similar attitudes (though I know there are some extreme exceptions).
Drinking habits can be dangerous. You can choke on the cloth and the nuns will wonder where their clothes are.
Thats not actually what the judges said. Several of them lamented the double standard; Thomas indicated that his agreement with the law was based on the idea that parents should have control of what their children take in, which he grounded on the framework that the founders would have had (which I dont think is an unreasonable way to approach the question of "What were they trying to say in the Constitution").
I didnt see any of them arguing the line that the state must censor-- in fact the ruling was that in this case the state could not.
These state and local judges are free to reach their own conclusions and, if they wish, allow sex and nudity in contexts the SC claims is forbidden.
Thats not at all what the suit was about. The suit was about whether the state could RESTRICT such things, not whether it could allow them. SCOTUS ruled 7-2 that it could NOT restrict them.
Well in retrospect, those arguments sound ridiculous, so with our slow social sanity improvements, hopefully we can see some of them rectified in our lifetime.
As for enforcement, I would argue that's probably a crime density issue. There are just places where drug transactions take place, and due to the illegal nature of drugs, a lot of other types of crime seem to show up as well. My wife tells me that in her youth, the the town two or three towns over from her was well known for it's drug trade, and if you were a "white kid" there after dark, the cops knew that you were there to buy drugs, which as it turns out was generally true. They were patrolling the areas of known crime, and surprise surprise, they found crime.
I think what you're missing here is a matter of racial inequality that may not necessarily be indicative of racism. Densely packed areas of poverty stricken, poorly educated, people tend to be boilerpots for crime. That seems to be true almost no matter what "race" we're talking about. The problem here is that due to past racism, certain social groups tend to be stuck in these self-perpetuating hellholes. it isn't that these young black men aren't committing crimes, it's that they're stuck in a situation that encourages it. THAT is the problem. there aren't magical racists behind the scenes keeping them down. They really are doing this stuff. The key is to figure out a way to break the cycle, not complain that they're locked up.
Look at the worst examples of trailer parks, and you going to see the same thing. it just isn't as glorified in the media because no rap singers are talking about their doublewide and popping a cap in their neighbor's lawn flamingo. You can be sure the cops are there on a regular basis however. Crime.
How are those free speech zones coming for you? Neither Indiana Jones nor 24 is banned in any European country by the way, so you're basically talking out your ass.
You're splitting hairs in such a way that defies reason. If the constitution says that Congress can't restrict something, I think it's a perfectly reasonable basis for claiming that there's a right involved, certainly more reasonable that claiming that there isn't.
I think I heard a "whoosh" sound over my head, but when I looked up, I couldn't see whatever it was. If you were making a joke that I missed, disregard the response below, I'm answering as if you were serious.
I'm all for freedom of speech.
Everybody says that. Few people are, and you aren't one of them.
I don't see what the point of that Fatality was.
That's not relevant, and thinking that it is relevant is why you're not for freedom of speech. It's easy to be in favor of speech you approve of, the test is whether you think people should have the right of speech to things that utterly disgust you, to things that would make you throw up when you witness it. Nobody has the right to force you to listen, but you don't have the right to stop them from speaking it.
And society isn't just made up of gamers, it's also made up of concerned parents who aren't gamers, women who may not enjoy seeing a virtual woman get split in half, Christians, Muslims, Atheists, and a whole lotta people who'll look at that and think "Hmm... maybe I should elect a politician who'll pass a law to ban that".
Except that our particular society is supposed to be made up of people who value individual rights. It's designed to make it extremely hard for any one group, even a majority one, to start controlling what people do. As of late, this hasn't been entirely the case, but the proper response to concerned parents who don't like mortal kombat is to supervise their children and ensure they don't play the game. The proper response to women, men, Christian, Muslims, Atheists and anybody else who think a law should be passed to ban mortal kombat should be, "sorry, the Constitution says that in our society such a law cannot exist, so you'll have to be satisfied with just avoiding buying the game or accumulate a big enough consensus that you can pass a constitutional amendment." I'm pretty sure such consensus doesn't exist, otherwise MK wouldn't sell, and there wouldn't be an issue in the first place.
Do you have health insurance? You do realize that someone else's medical care is paid for, out of your wallet by your premiums, right?
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
Because people having sex spend way less money than people waging wars.
LateArthurDent, thank you for your calm, and insightful post. I appreciate it.
Unfortunately there was no WHOOSH, my post was entirely serious and emotionally-based. You bring up valid, logical points. You are right: after some retrospection, I must conclude that I am not for free speech, I am for free speech with restrictions, based on my emotional outburst. You are also right that that I don't have the right to stop people from engaging in free speech.
In addition, you're right that the proper response is to tell parents and everyone else that doesn't like it that they need to supervise their children, and ensure they don't play the game.
LateArthurDent, your entire response is logical. To me, from a logical, rational viewpoint, it's a pitch-perfect explanation. The problem is that although I recognize and admit your logic is correct and your defense is rationally, emotionally, I don't care and I don't want to be logical about this because my emotional response is too strong. And given time to think about it and consider the logical, rational response you have given, I find that I still do not want to give any recognition to the logical, rational response and defense presented. I am that offended by what MK did. And herein is the problem that I was trying (albeit imperfectly) to point out in my OP.
Please understand, I recognize and appreciate your response. I am telling you that I am so offended by what MK did that even though I recognize the validity of your defense, I'm actively, purposely choosing to ignore it because my beliefs and my emotional well-being were violated by witnessing that. I'm pretty sure there's a couple million more people like me who would say the same thing: agree with your defense, don't care anyway.
To me, the flaw in your argument is that you argue presuming the Constitution and the Free Speech Amendment are sacrosanct. What I believe you are forgetting is that We The People do not serve the Constitution, The Constitution serves us. We, The People, are the ultimate authority in our land. The Constitution is just the rulebook that we all agree to play by, and the Government is the apparatus we create and elect to be our referee. You must therefore understand that if a substantial supermajority or even majority of people get ticked off about something, they have the right to make it Law, and not only that, but Constitutionally-appropriate Law. And if you get enough people ticked off enough to create a social-paradigm change, then suddenly that immutable logically correct Principle which underlays the First Amendment doesn't look so immutable. The First Amendment is only as strong as the social consensus behind it is. Get enough people ticked off, and you'll see some Constitutionally, People-approved limits placed on it.
This is why I'm demanding to know what the hell the MK designers were thinking. That Fatality offended me on a deep, visceral level, to a degree strong enough that I don't give a flying fuck about what Logic and Reason say I should be responding. I want a damn good explanation/justification for why that was created. And if there isn't one, then I will find myself saying "Fuck the First Amendment, Fuck Reason, Fuck Logic, I want that shit canned and those designers fired because that was Blasphemy to me".
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
BTW I agree children don't have rights ... only a fully-mature adult mind can handle, such as free speech, voting, sex, and so on.
Why is a "fully-mature adult mind" required for free speech? Voting is restricted by most state constitutions which is allowed because the constitution does not define the age. The same is true for age of consent laws. Free speech is defined that everyone has the right to free speech. There is no exception for children.
The Supreme court case regarding the school involved the fact that the speech that can be restricted must be disruptive and disorderly to the class and the other students. They still have free speech rights.
The idea that children don't have rights is patently absurd. They are people, they have rights. Some of those rights are restricted by the state based on age, but the rights afforded by the constitution still apply.
Actually, the studies do not say they don't mature and/or function "properly" the studies just show that on average, the brain is still maturing until the age of 25. There is a difference between functioning properly and still maturing and growing.
Generally I see this usually used by the previous generation spouting "See, the new generation is just a bunch of idiots" because they disagree with them.
That was why he showed it, because of the huge double-standard involved. This is extremely distasteful and he even warned the audience that they will find it extremely distasteful as well. The joke wasn't the clip itself. The joke was that that particular clip is legal in a video game sold for minors while even the slightest show of a nipple would get it banned.
Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 1 hour, 47 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
Um, what are the first ten amendments to the constitution called again? Bill of... something....
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Make War not Love!
:)
War on Drugs!
War on Terror!
War on Crime!
War on Poverty!
Bear arms but don't bare breasts!
At least by my experience...
"Properly" being defined as, the same as or equivalent to the majority, sane."
There are plenty of so-called adults, over 25 years of age in this context, that as you say "can not properly estimate risks, come to a rational conclusion, so on and so on". I am not joking.
I'd say there are way more adults with this sort of deficiency than teens.
Shall we bring up the topic of a citizenship test, even for the native born?
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
You don't know what the word hypocrisy means. A person is not hypocritical when their choices are different from the ones you would make. They are hypocritical when their choices are different from prior choices they have made.
continue it, but base it on income, not race
the real reason for the economic disparity between whites and blacks in the usa is because of economics, and that IS a historical hangover from institutional, governmental, and ad hoc societal favoritism towards WHITES since, well, since before this country was founded
in fact, affirmative action should exist forever, but again, based on income, not race. there is no reason why a rich black son should get preferential treatment over a poor white son, but there IS a reason for a poor child, of any race, to get preferential treatment over a rich child, of any race
simply because without the counteracting force of government policy, nepotism and cronyism will inevitably concentrate power and wealth with a few. governmental policy HAS to counteract this, in any society, for all time. or injustice, based on economic class, inevitably develops
a true meritocracy is NOT the default status of human society. money INEVITABLY concentrates power, which leads to cronyism and nepotism: the useless son of the rich guy getting the good high ranking job, rather than the guy who busted his ass for 20 years in the company and who really deserves
therefore, society MUST counteract nepotism and croyism and favoritism based on class, wealth, and family connections by promoting poor but brilliant children to the front of the line, forever. the free market does not sovle this problem, it CREATES this problem
a free market will DESTROY a true meritocracy based society because of cronyism and nepotism
that is, belief in a self-regulating society, and belief in a meritocracy, are mutually exclusive beliefs. to believe in meritocracy, you must believe in government regulation and programs LIKE affirmative action (but not EXACTLY like affirmative action), and you must understand that a self-regulating society will inevitbly lead to a regimented stratified calss based society where power and wealth concentrate with a few: money attracts more money, and that's the way it's always been. a just society MUST constantly counteract this natural gravity
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
America is still, to this day, trying to shake off centuries of puritan tradition. But we're doing it. Each generation is a bit more socially sane than the last one.
Really? From what I can tell, the United States has become far more puritan over the years since the liberal 60s.
Something is seriously wrong when people consider nudity obscene, but goring someone isn't.
Rights are not typically unlimited. My right to swing my fist ends at your nose. But, I do still have a right to swing my fist even though it could potentially hit somebody. I can say what I like so long as it isn't slanderous or fraudulent etc.
The second amendment is a really, really bad example as it wasn't ever ratified and the language itself even if it had been ratified is such that it means a lot of conflicting things depending upon whom you ask.
I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way..... I don't do interracial marriages because I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves. In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer." = Judge Barrow
He clearly stated that this is his own belief. He not exhorting the mob to do massive violence on differently-skinned people KKK-style. He's not encouraging violence. Stimulating violence is what counts as "hate speech" in most European jurisdiction.
On the other hand, he is making a discrimination solely based on the racial profile of the people who wanted to be married. He is refusing to recognise a marriage because of skin colour. In most European jurisdiction, he would have had problems due to anti-discrimination laws.
To get problems with the hate speech law, he would have needed to say something like "All the negroe don't deserve to marry, they need to be lynched instead !!!". That would have certainly counted as hate speech.
Again we see that sex is considered harmful on your side of the pond, on our side, it's violence which is considered taboo.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
First off, this is not really off topic, because it is has very much to do with the level of state involvement in our lives and the balance between state and citizen.
Nobody has the right to raid my wallet for cash to pay for those things.
Well technically we do. Unless you are somebody that makes arguments about how government does not have the rights to tax people for whatever reason. Which I will admit, I don't keep up with those arguments simply because government cannot operate without taxes or without taking resources directly from people to do what they need. I prefer the taxes instead of the military showing up to my business and telling me they are taking X amount of product.
I talk with a lot of people, and have a lot of friends and relatives that think the way that you do. I can respect where you are coming from. You worked damn hard, made good decisions, and are a productive member of society. So why is it that you must suffer because other people are uneducated and irresponsible fools that need to be taken care of?
There are two ways to look at this.
1) Human compassion. In no way I am saying you are a bad person at all. All I am saying is that we have become so big as a society we have forgotten that we all started out as a group that highly depended on others to survive. We took care of our sick. Hospitality was usually a given just 150-200 years ago. If you were a traveler in need it was not uncommon for you to find a farm, collective, or village and be offered help. You usually returned the favor by helping them with their work. Also, it was not uncommon for people to share beds either that just met.
These are things that we have forgotten as we have advanced so quickly and independence and individuality has gone so far that we even distance ourselves and have lost strong family ties. I have quite a few Chinese-American friends where entire families live in huge houses and they all pull together. Quite different from a cultural perspective, but is actually more consistent with the rest of the world.
We see people today in need and in pain and we look the other way. Our fast paced lives, made more difficult by financial constraints and rampant consumption lead us to ignore people in need where we would have freely helped them out in the recent centuries before. You could say it was the "Christian" thing to do, or justify in some other way, but it really was part of our culture until recently.
2) Pure, heartless, emotionless logic.
Government sucks. All of those ass clowns in corporations and legislative bodies lead to such huge amounts of inefficiency you are perfectly correct to be pissed off that government takes your money and uses it in ways that are stupid, wasteful, and not consistent with the will of People.
That being said, in a purely selfish manner (remember this is logic), you're interests are better served by taking care of these people. You should consider Maslov's Pyramid. If we completely got rid of all social programs and had zero Socialism in the US, were purely Free Market (Illusion), then what would happen to all those people?
Sure.... you would not be paying for them, but you would keep looking over your shoulder. Desperate people do desperate things. So unless you want to start deporting Americans that cannot support themselves fully, or medical problems they cannot afford to have looked at which is tantamount to Eugenics, you would have a percentage of the population that WILL resort to criminal activity.
I have been a consultant for so long and relied on my strength of will to survive. Did not have medical insurance because I always felt invincible and healthy as a horse. When I started having issues I realized that I could not afford or get approved for medical insurance. I don't mind saying that I got pretty desperate and have some insight into just what some people are going th
Nice try. Swastikas are not banned in Germany.