Did Ben Shapiro just churn out the dumbest paragraph ever produced by a professional pundit?
Conservative columnist Ben Shapiro thinks the FBI should spend resources investigating producers of adult pornography suspected of obscenity (obscenity being a crime). That is probably, but not definitely, the minority view in America, but not particularly outrageous. This, however, is a brain goof of epic proportions:
This has become the dominant view in our society: As long as what I do doesn’t harm you personally, I have a right to do it. It’s a silly view and a view rejected by law enforcement policies all over the country. Were we to truly recognize such a philosophy, we would have to legalize prostitution, drugs and suicide — as well as the murder of homeless drifters with no family or friends. After all, if someone kills a homeless drifter, how does that affect anyone else?
Uh, Ben, the operative phrase here is “doesn’t harm you personally” and “you” in this case would be the homeless drifter with no family or friends.
It should also be noted that what we “have” to legalize is typically more a matter of practicallity than simple dogma: Lotteries and other forms of gambling are allowed to prevent criminal enterprises from sucking up the billions of dollars that consumers are willing to spend on it, not because it doesn’t harm anyone. But even though some gambling is legal, drugs are illegal across the board in the U.S., and same largely holds true for prostitution.
Having said that, I agree with him that “as long as what I do doesn’t harm you personally, I have a right to do it” is quite inadequate as a guiding principle for society.
Even so, if you, like me, fear that an American city one day will be evaporated by a nuclear bomb deployed by Muslim terrorists, then you might just decide that chasing adult-porn producers is an inappropriate use of government resources at present time (as was the prosecution of Martha Stewart, for that matter). Government can’t drop everything it does to chase terrorists, or even most of it, but it can and should elect to not expend time and energy on what is of marginal importance. For the FBI, adult porn should be of marginal importance, for now.
