Alphecca

Still Meandering...

Robert Prather is one of the brighter bloggers around and he has some suggestions on the direction of our foreign policy. Here's a quote:

...I doubt he [Bush] meant this exactly, but I would go as far as to say that we should abandon NATO -- our high military spending is enabling continental Europe to underspend on their military and the military they do have is ill-trained for combat and is better suited to peacekeeping.

We've got a lot of problems in this country right now, not the least of which is that we're trying (as a nation, a government) to defend our borders from mutant terrorists. We're in the middle of a costly war in Iraq.
....

But with all that is going on and all that we have to worry about, not the least of which is that we're in an election year, why the hell is the administration worrying about porno?

Is there really some urgent need for Ashcroft and the FBI and prosecutors et al to be tying up precious manpower, resources, and court time with this nonsense? And by the way, this is "adult" porno we're talking about. Consenting adults having sex and allowing consenting film makers to photograph it for consenting adult viewers.

While Alphecca also falls for the false dilemma, I’m more interested in the way he tops it off by invoking the third law of libertarianism: “Consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want.” Fortunately, I’ve never met a libertarian who would make that “law” an absolute principle.

Well, my point in pointing out that the "type" of porno being targeted (adult) was simply to distinguish it from child or "kiddie" porn. I am not defending pornography. I don't like it and I don't visit it. Even the mild sex-sequences of shows such as The Sopranos embarrasses me and I speed through it on the DVD when watching it.

I certainly do not endorse or support "snuff" porno, or violent porno, and I really don't think my original post supported such. Apparently, I didn't make myself clear enough in my post: I am not defending porno, I am (was) castigating the Justice Department for wasting valuable manpower, agents, money, court-time, et cetera fighting "small beer" when these same agents (even if there are only six of them) could be scanning the thousands of leads to threats that are made against our nation during a time of terrorism. My post was about priorities for our FBI. We are running a half-trillion deficit, and we are tying up agents who could better be spending their time scanning and investigating the thousands of "clues" being spoken, published, webbed, every day.

We (America) are under attack by all the "Religion of Peace" Muslem terrorists of the world. What if the one clue to an attack went un-noticed because one agent "studying porno" wasn't there to see the real threat to our country? As in all life, we have to pick our battles and right now we are in a huge one. Porno is just an asterisk in our nation's problems.

Think about this: There is a home on fire and nearby, a small patch of grass also on fire. Where do you direct the fire-fighters to concentrate?

Joe is a friend of Alphecca, and I usually agree with his views, but not this time. That won't end our friendship nor will it lessen my high opinion of his blog. This time we'll just have to agree to disagree.