Let’s Crack Down On Internet Barbarism
If there is one problem with the recently signed Communications Decency Act, which makes it illegal to post “indecent” material on the Internet computer network, it is its name. Discussions of indecency and pornography conjure up images of Playboy and Hustler magazines, when, in fact, the kind of material available on the Internet goes far beyond indecency and descends into barbarism.
Most parents never have been on the Internet, so they cannot imagine what their children easily have access to in cyberspace: child molestation, bestiality, sadomasochism and even specific descriptions of how to get sexual gratification by killing children.
Though First Amendment absolutists are loath to admit it, this debate is not about controlling pornography but about fighting crime.
There are few things more dangerous for a civilization than allowing the deviant and the criminal to become part of the mainstream. Every society has had its red-light districts, but going to them involved danger, stigmatization and often legal sanction. Now, however, the red-light districts can invade our homes and our children’s minds.
During a recent taping of a “Firing Line” debate on controlling pornography on the Internet, which will air March 22, I was stunned by the gulf that separates the two sides.
For Ira Glasser, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, and his team, it was about freedom and the First Amendment; for our side, headed by Bill Buckley, it was about our children and the kind of culture that surrounds them.
There are three main arguments on the other side, and we are going to be hearing a lot of them in the year ahead as the ACLU’s challenge to the Communications Decency Act goes to court.
The first is that there is no justification for abridging First Amendment rights.
The reality, however, is that depictions of criminal behavior have little to do with free speech.
Moreover, there is no absolute protection of free speech in the Constitution. The First Amendment does not cover slander, false advertising and perjury, nor does it protect obscenity and child pornography. Restricting criminal material on the Internet should be a matter of common sense in any country that values its children more than it values the rights of consumers addicted to what degrades and dehumanizes.
Civilization is about trade-offs. And I gladly would sacrifice the rights of millions of Americans to have easy Internet access to “Bleed Little Girl Bleed” or “Little Boy Snuffed” for the sake of reducing the likelihood that one more child would be molested or murdered. With more than 80 percent of child molesters admitting they have been regular users of hard-core pornography, it becomes impossible to continue hiding behind the First Amendment and denying the price we are paying.
The second most prevalent argument against regulating pornography on the Internet is that it should be the parents’ responsibility to do so.
But this is an odd argument coming from the same people who have been campaigning for years against parents’ rights to choose the schools their children attend.
Now they are attributing to parents qualities normally reserved for God - omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence. In reality, parents never have felt more powerless to control the cultural influences that shape their children’s character and lives.
The third argument that we heard a lot during the “Firing Line” debate is that it would be difficult - nay, impossible - to regulate depictions of criminal behavior in cyberspace. We even heard liberals lament the government intrusion that such regulations would entail.
How curious that we never hear how invasive it is for government to restrict the rights of businessmen polluting the environment or farmers threatening the existence of the kangaroo rat!
Yes, it is difficult to regulate the availability of criminal material on the Internet, but the decline and fall of civilizations throughout history are testimony to the fact that maintaining a civilized society never has been easy. One clear sign of decadence is when abstract rights are given more weight than real lives.
It is not often that I have the opportunity to side with President Clinton, who eloquently has defended restrictions on what children may be exposed to on the Internet. When the president is allied with the Family Research Council and when Americans for Tax Reform is allied with the ACLU, we know that the divisions here transcend liberal vs. conservative.
They have to do with our core values and most sacred priorities.
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