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points by lo_zamoyski 4 days ago | 0 comments
In a morally relativistic, legally positivistic hyper-individualism that ignores the objective truth and prioritizes individual “autonomy” over substantive moral ends, you can pervert any positive law to mean whatever you wish - this is how pornography came to be regarded as protected free speech. (The classical legal tradition views law as an ordinance of reason directed toward the common good.)

So I wouldn’t be surprised under the right social and cultural conditions and the right people in power that it could become regarded as a protected liberty. It is rather frightening that this relativism – deprived of objective anchors and standards – doesn’t strike people as terrifying. Too many people take for granted the status quo they are accustomed to, or they are so fixated on satisfying some appetite du jour that they fail to grasp the waiting Dionysian fallout[0].

[0] https://chs.harvard.edu/primary-source/euripides-bacchae-sb/

[–] sidewndr46 4 days ago
I'm not really sure where you are getting this ivory tower view from. Pornography is not protected speech in the united states. The actual legal test as applied by our justice system for this "I know it when I see it" as applied under the Roth test. The practical effect of this is that our legal system is free to censor whatever it wants when it deems it necessary to. You seem deeply disappointed that our society as a result, chose obscenity quite often rather than censorship.

My general position has been that the durability of the Bill of Rights is directly attributed to what you call "relativism". When the government finds the Bill of Rights to be unpleasant, they simply decide it never applied in the first place.