“A government that would be established on the basis of the principle of benevolence toward the people, as a father vis-à-vis his children, that is, a paternalistic government (imperium paternale) would be given the greatest imaginable despotism (a constitution that nullifies all freedom of the subjects, who thus have no rights).”
Immanuel Kant, “On the Common Saying: This May Be True in Theory, but It Does Not Hold in Practice”
In a New York Times article dated July 16, 2016 (“It’s O.K., Liberal Parents, You Can Freak Out About Porn”), Judith Shulevitz suggests that the growing presence of pornography, although a staple of concerns among conservatives, should also worry liberal parents. The author informs the reader of the latest fetishes, including necrophilia and women in diapers, and indicates it is high time for discussion because children are exposed at roughly 11 years. This formative age is one to keep clean and innocent, suggests the author. If children can access porn with little trouble and find these fetishes online at a click, shouldn’t we be worried about the future of our country?
I would suggest that these fetishes are the product of decades of our weakening social structure, and our failure to interact meaningfully with one another. Sexual perversion indicates a distortion or damming of the capacity for pleasure. Freud writes in Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, “A certain depreciation in the striving for the normal sexual aim may be presupposed in all these cases (executive weakness of the sexual apparatus).” [Italics mine] Further he notes, “The early sexual intimidation which pushes the person away from the normal sexual aim and urges him to seek a substitute, has been demonstrated by psychoanalysis, as an accidental determinant.” Human minds create such filmed fetishes and it is the average Joe who watches them. Why has our sexual morality declined to strike so amiss? Concretely, fetishes stand for the things they symbolize. Perhaps these fixations are remnants of individual infantile sexuality, but their popularity suggests a larger cause. We detect an abyss between two extremes: infancy, as symbolized by diapers; and death, in necrophilia. Are these extremes somehow symbolic of how far our deterioration has gone? As Lacan remarked in Seminar XVII, “What’s disturbing is that if one pays in jouissance, then one has got it, and then, once one has got it it is very urgent that one squander it. If one does not squander it, there will be all sorts of consequences.” Jouissance is a twofold concept. In French, it involves two forms of enjoyment: one, of property; and the other, of sexual orgasm. Since these dual human urges are united by this central concept it may be that the psychology of property is similar to the psychology of sexuality. The central tenet of these psychologies is power. Ownership is a class of dominance and sexual relationships are based on mutual exchanges of pleasure and gratification. If government reflects human psychology, perhaps the master and servant dialogue conforms to the metaphor of law and citizen. We take part in our own cultural demise, and even in our own liberation. Foucault noted that power is evenly distributed throughout the social body. The 1960’s saw the momentous sexual revolution that gave us Roe v. Wade, radical feminism, gender and queer studies, and ultimately the right to your own body. Whether you count these things as good or transgressive, they were a major step in liberating sexuality from authoritarian control. As consequence we have seen a steady decline in abortion rates, acceptance of homosexuality and extensions in civil rights to include transgenders, gays, and lesbians, and entire university programs that concern groups who have suffered persecution or discrimination. Methods of birth control have evolved, and condoms among other devices are widely disseminated. We owe such liberties to our own tough struggle against the tyranny of tradition and moral monopolies. As stated at www.lacanonline.com: “Love is thereby the antidote to a kind of caustic narcissism that we can see as correlated to Lacan’s idea of jouissance.” Love is seen as a tension between the object and the ego that balances itself between pleasure and displeasure. Love is indeed a struggle between opposite pairs.
In contrast to the liberated libido, government policy and technology has led us into a dark lonely corner. National bureaucratic controls exist in every aspect of our lives. Children are removed from their homes by Child Protective Services for a variety of reasons, just or unjust, causing parents fear of losing custody especially if they are poor and live in dire conditions. Housing regulations and property taxes cost property owners, who then pass the burden to the renter. The Pentagon monitors our interactions on social media daily, even if we are not conscious of it. Snowden blew the whistle on how carefully the NSA watches our daily activities, and how even chance meetings with targeted persons can earn us a spot on the watch list. The Small Business Administration’s study “The Impact of Regulatory Costs on Small Firms” states that “the combined federal burden is growing at a real annual rate of 5.5 percent.” This same study further explains that compliance with federal regulations cost Americans 14 percent of their income in 2008. Even public spaces are prone to invasion. With 17,000 libraries in the United States, patron security is important. Due to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT ACT, librarians can be asked to provide everything from patron lists to Internet logs by the FBI. The case of the “Connecticut Four” serves as proof that government agencies will act against our public freedoms. Library staff person Steve Woolfolk of Kansas City, Missouri defended the free speech of a questioning audience member at a forum held at his library. The questioning patron was forcefully escorted out by hired security. Mr. Woolfolk and the patron now face criminal charges. The 1033 program, passed by President Clinton in 1997, authorizes the use of military-grade equipment by local police departments. Between 1990 and 2014, the Department of Defense gave out 5 billion dollars in equipment. Even small towns with low numbers of officers are on the giveaway list. The program attracted widespread attention after the Ferguson riots when protestors were assaulted by tanks and tear gas. This style of containing demonstrations has become regular, and it could be considered excessive for a country founded on the right to peaceful assembly. It certainly does not conform to standards of legitimate force.
Aside from these institutional bombardments against liberty, even the student-citizen is taking to attacks on free expression in the form of safe spaces and trigger warnings. Although the intention is to protect the emotional integrity of the student, the safe space is being used to censor unfavorable material and ideas in the classroom. In this effort, we forget that “whatever is qualified to cause terror is a foundation capable of the sublime” (Edmund Burke, On the Sublime and Beautiful). In today’s university, it may be usual to hear about censoring racial slurs meant to challenge racism or asking that a painting be covered because it displays a nude woman, in the name of dignity. The right of dissent can be expected or discouraged depending on whose view you take. Ask Charlie Hebdo journalist Zineb al Rhazoui, for instance, who is currently on an ISIS kill list. During her speaking engagement at the University of Chicago, she was questioned by a Muslim student concerning her “disrespect” toward Muslims. She expressed irritation. Subsequently, she was attacked in the student newspaper for making university members feel “unsafe” to express dissenting views. In this climate, young people will leave college unprepared to confront or recognize everyday assaults on personal dignity. They will not be able to communicate effectively with those presenting unfavorable ideas or emotions to them, and will seek to impose unrealistic attitudes on others. Handling confrontation and learning to negotiate are skill sets our colleges must impart. One common excuse for censorship is the menace of “rape culture.” RAINN stated in a 2014 report that “Rape is caused not by cultural factors but by the conscious decisions, of a small percentage of the community, to commit a violent crime.” This fact solidifies my case against the misguided student. However, the problem is one of legal definitions—students themselves request authorities protect their health, and by law such a claim must be handled seriously. As if invasive government is not enough, we have to fear each others’ misguided vigilance in reporting. Students are not the only group misapplying law. Frivolous litigation from suits against Kentucky Fried Chicken for falsely advertising the amount of chicken in a bucket to a suit against Kraft Foods for putting trans-fat in Oreo’s are reminders that corporations also get caught in the sanctions net. Let’s not forget that New York taxpayers requested that public funds be withdrawn from the arts because “Piss Christ” offended their tastes, in spite of the fact a Catholic nun and art critic spoke highly on behalf of it and its purpose.
Freedom of expression is one of the key pillars of American democracy. It enables open discussion, the right to resolve matters through mature dialogue and acculturate an attitude of acceptance. Political correctness is one of the ways the national dialogue is strained by unrealistic demands. Conversations are frequently interrupted by cries of racism, lack of patriotism, or another one of today’s many red herrings. We cannot have dialogue when each party is trying to suppress ideas presented by the other party, regardless if this censorship takes the form of McCarthyist blacklisting or SJW’s petitioning a university to cancel certain lecturers. Whether it is political correctness or patriotic correctness, the result is the same. One conversant walks away from the discussion with a self-righteous smirk and the other with a sense of shame. These tactics of damming sane cultural dialogue have strained relationships and convinced the citizenry to act in false vigilance. We are making it likely we will simply avoid each other or meaningful talk, especially if we disagree concerning these matters. If we are free to discuss our concerns without censorship, I imagine we will find more to agree on than less.
The pursuit of truth is myriad and therefore requires discernment. Discernment must be personal and encourage options. Intimidating those who hold unfavorable views is censorship. If people regardless of race, sexual orientation, political allegiance, nationality, gender, or career path, feel they are not welcome in the public discourse it is safe to say America is betraying the ideal of an inclusive society. Growing numbers of people distrust the network media because they sense an inherent bias. This is a symptom of feeling excluded, of your views and values being ignored and misunderstood. Another subset of political allegiance feels that their opponents are xenophobic, racist, and want to keep their positions of power inherent to our culture. They express their difficulties in getting their fundamental message across to an unwilling group of naysayers. Their enemies criticize liberal immigration policies and confront supporters with cases of immigrant criminality or tax-related complaints. Perhaps the citizen’s isolation is the illness. This isolation, I propose, combined with intense social frustration, is the root of our deviancy.
Do we want our children brought up in a country that gives the mixed message that we are both free, but also restrained by unpopular legislation written by Congressional leaders declining in public approval? Should entitlement, that is a sense that the world should cater to our personal preferences and prejudices, be taken as normal? If fetishes of necrophilia are normal but accepting others without imposition is considered cowardice, we are in a poor state indeed. It is becoming common to resort to litigation rather than mature discussion or arbitration. Most of our intellectual and artistic history is put into question as being tainted with offensive and dangerous suggestions. Government, like a god, mediates serious issues we develop amongst ourselves. Do we want to shape the world through institutional force or by individual merit? The world we are currently creating for ourselves and the plan we indicate for the future demands a straight answer.
Back to the Immanuel Kant quote at the beginning of this article. It is ideal to begin a republic on the principle of self-determination, not on benevolence. Private enterprise strengthens social bonds and economic prosperity by allowing the community to build itself from the ground up. Imagine a government, fed on war and plunder, simply giving its bounty to citizens as a favor for keeping silent. The rich will certainly get richer at the expense of such silence. We need to pave the road to our prosperity with personal opportunity. By limiting bureaucratic control and opening funding to small businesses and providing the means to produce by equal opportunity, we will see a stronger and more robust country. We will see a country that can pride itself on self-reliance, openness, and personal enrichment. The shackles of prejudice and miserliness will give way to love of your neighbor and mutual aid. Without the middleman agency of government lodging its way into our affairs, the need for social forms of censorship will perish as we see each other benefit and we benefit in return.