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April 23, 2008
Conservatives Against Personal Autonomy
Kathryn Jean Lopez beclowns herself by defending this guy.
Concerned that the military is selling pornography in exchange stores in spite of a ban, one lawmaker has introduced a bill to clean up the matter.Think about that for a second - the spokesman for a GOP congressman is saying that the government has the right to control what a person does with their salary if that money comes from the federal government.“Our troops should not see their honor sullied so that the moguls behind magazines like Playboy and Penthouse can profit,” said Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., unveiling his House bill April 16...
...Exchange officials noted that tax dollars are not used to procure magazines in the system’s largely self-funded operations.
But Broun’s spokesman John Kennedy contended that taxpayer dollars are involved — “used to pay military salaries, so taxpayer money is, in effect, being used to buy these materials,” he said.
I'm not a fan of pornography - I believe it is degrading. However, I do not believe that the government should have the right or the power to determine what people do with the money they are paid as salary. Especially if the people in question are those who put their lives on the line to preserve our freedoms.
Lopez is one of my least favorite writers at NRO's Corner, and her weak defense of Broun's bill shows a disrespect for the very conservative ideal of the rights of individuals to spend the money they've earned.
Broun should remember one thing, though. Congressman are paid with federal money. Does he really want to set this precedent?
Update - It's this sort of thing that makes social conservatives so unpopular in the Republican party. It's not the anti-pornography stance - it is the willingness, eagerness even, on the part of social conservatives to leverage the power of government to mold society in their image.
Imagine for a moment if the Democrats put an amendment on the economic stimulus bill telling Americans that because the government was providing the checks, we were forbidden to use those funds to purchase books by conservative authors. Conservatives would be outraged, and rightly so.
And yet conservatives in Congress and at NRO using the same justification for supporting a prohibition against a particular product. Lopez has moved to the "porn is bad for families" argument, for which I have some level of sympathy. But that doesn't change the fundamental question of whether it is the proper role of government to 'protect' people from self-harm.
It's becoming clear that a particular segment of social conservatives in the GOP aren't really all that small-c conservative.
Posted by slublog at April 23, 2008 11:46 PM
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Comments
Ugh. I like Paul Broun but mostly because he swore off pork. But his logic on this is such a stretch that even a Democrat can't understand it. Ugh.
Posted by: Conservative Belle at April 24, 2008 01:57 PM
"Lopez is one of my least favorite writers at NRO's Corner"
Couldn't you just change "my" to "the?" I always assumed everyone felt this way - I sure do.
Posted by: Knemon at April 25, 2008 01:11 PM
K-Lo lost me years ago, back when her boss, Rich Lowry, wrote a book, and she used practically every one of her posts on The Corner to hawk the thing. The book might have been great for all I know (never actually read it), but the incessant sales pitches were just a total waste of bandwidth.
Posted by: Paco at April 25, 2008 04:03 PM
It's becoming clear that a particular segment of social conservatives in the GOP aren't really all that small-c conservative.
Jeez, Slu, where have been for the past two decades? Of the three primary constituencies of modern movement conservatism--social, foreign policy & fiscal--only the fiscals are anywhere near small-c. And of the Republican candidates for president, only Ron Paul was. Ooh, that's gotta sting.
Posted by: Dolf Fenster at April 26, 2008 03:49 PM
Next ban the wrong kinds of dancing, wrong movies, wrong books---we all know the end of this stuff. This aspect of the Republican Party has always turned me off, always. It took William F Buckley to rid us of the bigots I don't know what it will take to get rid of these self anointed supervisors of morals and put them into another party, but I'm listening.
Posted by: Howard Veit at April 26, 2008 08:33 PM