Retailer Being Good Corporate Citizen It’s Good Business Society Has A Duty To Resist Cultural Decay.

The most insidious pollution in the United States doesn’t come from smokestacks. It comes from the entertainment industry. It comes from sicko “artists” who contend Americans have a duty not only to tolerate their bilge but also to buy it.

Wrong. Freedom of speech creates a right to offer a noxious message. But it creates no duty to buy, sell or approve. Toleration loses both dignity and virtue if it leads the liberal-minded to bless the socially destructive.

Consider, for example, some of the “lifestyles” promoted in popular music and movies. This multibillion-dollar industry is founded heavily on the disposable income and raging hormones of American adolescents. Its corporations capitalize on the adolescent compulsion to rebel.

But each crop of teens must go further to shock the last one. So the music and role models manufactured for America’s young have skidded downhill, past the glamorization of smoking, booze, promiscuity, drugs, androgyny, gangs, misogyny, rape, suicide, shooting police officers …

Along the way, families crumbled, drugs spread, kids gave birth to kids and violent gangs assaulted the cities.

No, this is not a simplistic story of cause and effect. Cultural decay has many roots, some outside the entertainment industry.

But in any case, responsible members of society have a duty to resist. How? By crushing freedom beneath the boot of a government censor? No.

Freedom is the answer. The freedom of an aroused marketplace. When popular music sank into the ugliness of grunge and rap, country music soared in popularity. Today, contemporary Christian music packs arenas with crowds of screaming teens. Family films such as “Toy Story” enjoy commercial success while images of nihilistic gore play to empty theaters.

And now, big retailers such as Wal-Mart and Blockbuster refuse to stock their shelves with wares that a majority of customers deem socially destructive. They are being good corporate citizens and practicing smart business to boot.

When scum producers whine that they can’t find merchants willing to sell their wares, that is wonderful news. It means kids still hear the voice of conscience and adults still have enough judgment to save our culture. It means the free market can clean as effectively as it can corrupt. It means there’s hope.

, DataTimes MEMO: See opposing view under the headline: Censorship is much more offensive

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