But this, along with Bill Woolsey’s comments, prove we are comparing apples to acorns. Food, drugs, and child porn are all vastly different from one another. I am mostly playing devil’s advocate by defending Mary’s right to broach the subject. If child porn (the possession and sale, not the production) were legal, I still think it would be in the shadows. There may even be more vigilante justice against perverts to keep it in the shadows. Like I’ve said before, I’ve made the case that the sale of child porn constitutes an act of aggression just as a hired killing does.

Anyway, to the degree that the purpose of drug prohibition is to help drug abusers (by keeping drugs away from them,) prohibition has some counterproductive affects. Those who abuse drugs anyway are made much worse off. On the other hand, this seems likely to deter some people from ever abusing drugs. (To the degree the aim is to punish
drug abusers, then these counter-productive impacts of prohibition aren’t
such a concern.)

Anyway, prohibtion of the production and sale of child pornography isn’t aimed at protecting pedophiles. That those who use it anyway are worse off isn’t a problem. And detering people from using it, is the point. But
it really isn’t being done to help the pedophile.

It is actually possible that prohibition will increase the total revenue from
production and sale. A smaller quantity at a higher price can raise revenue. Or, it can lower it. However, it is unlikely existing corn farmers would want to use prohibition of the product as a method of raising total revenue. And, even if total revenue were to fall from prohibition, that doesn’t mean that there won’t be more than enough revenue to encourage criminals to produce and sell a smaller quantity
for profit.

The logic of black markets just explains that something isn’t likely
to simply disappear because it is banned.

Haven’t you heard. According to the leading Darwinist of our time humans evolved from Crystals!

I demonstrate that you are a “believer” and since those people are “believers” they “believe” what you “believe”?

Now your learnin. Slowly, but learnin.

That linguistic trick might work on a five year old but not on grown ups.

Seems to work when Baldwin uses it.

GE,
I got my Direct Deposit welfare today. if you are using check, you could be waiting until July depending on the last 2 #s in your socialist slave number.

1. Okay, I’ll be plain. I have not done the amount of research that I’m sure Ms. Ruwart has done on the issue. I do not consider child porn to be a significant problem (i.e. a common one), but maybe I’m wrong. I do find child-sex abuse to be a very serious problem and something far too common that is dealt with far too lightly by state governments. Therefore, I will give a qualified yes to your question, with plenty of caveats. To put it as simply as possible, I would have no problem with the state of Michigan executing an indisputably guilty habitual child molestor. Is that good enough?

2. Federal power is inherently worse than local because the administers of it are far removed from the people who elected them. Why not just let a World Counsul in Beijing determine the curriculum of our public schools? When tyrants are local, they can be ousted more easily.

You say we can argue history another time, but then you make several historically contentious comments: The North was violently and reprehensibly racist as well as the South. Though it seems absurd on the face of it, a credible argument can be made that the North was MORE racist than the South. Regardless, I blame the South’s racist legacy, post-Civil War, squarely at the feet of the Republican Party, for its invasion of the South under the false banner of emancipation, and its later Reconstruction. I do not for a moment believe that the Republicans, in general, were interested in the plight of African-Americans beyond getting them to the polling place to vote for them.

3. You bring up Lysander Spooner. I assume you know that he was a hardcore anti-Lincolnian who agreed with the South’s right to secede, right? Spooner was an anarchist and I am not, so we will not be 100% on the same page. I’m far from a Spooner expert, but my guess is that while (you say and I assume it’s accurate that) he considered local authority to be a “fiction,” he would probably agree that far-removed authority was far worse!