Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

September 3, 2012

The 2012 Republican Party platform calls for ?[c]urrent laws on all forms of pornography and obscenity ?to be vigorously enforced.?

That pornography is a soul-destroying vice is incontestable. When its production involves aggression against the rights of innocent people ? such as children ? a crime is committed. The Republican platform doesn?t recognize the critical distinction between vices and crimes.

In his essay ?Vices Are Not Crimes: A Vindication of Moral Liberty,? 19^th Century abolitionist Lysander Spooner observed that "Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property. Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another.... For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be a falsehood, or falsehood truth."

Here?s that distinction described in practical terms: A man who owns pornography is indulging in a vice. Agents of the federal Transportation Security Administration who force air travelers to undergo virtual strip-searches by way of airport porno-scanners are committing a crime.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.