Site Meter Reflections on Playboy: TV Turnoff Week turns me off

April 26, 2006

TV Turnoff Week turns me off

This is “TV Turnoff Week 2006” according to the leftist crypto-puritans at Adbusters Ballbusters. The other night, Jimmy Kimmel rightly congratulated his viewers for ignoring it.

In my journey from liberalism (in the distinctly American sense of the term) to libertarianism, I’ve learned to my frustration that crypto-puritanism abounds on the left. While many on the right are prone to moral panics about issues like same-sex marriage, emergency contraception, and medical marijuana, various subgroups of the left are prone to moral panics about television, consumerism, fast food, tobacco, biotechnology, cosmetic surgery, alternatives to public school, ethnic humor, or sexual speech in the workplace. All these panics exhibit faulty scientific or political reasoning, and they’re all potentially dangerous. If you’re against genetically modified food, please explain why, on at least one occasion, activists on your side would have preferred to see victims of a natural disaster starve to death rather than receive emergency food shipments.

Since many, perhaps most, of these left-wing moralists aren’t traditionally religious, religion doesn’t deserve all the blame for the human tendency to let moral reasoning degenerate into crude moralism of one kind or another. Cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, in the chapter titled “The Sanctimonious Animal” in his book The Blank Slate, makes an eye-opening argument that humans have a natural tendency to moralize—and that they should make some effort to resist this tendency in themselves. I credit Playboy with encouraging this effort on some fronts, although its justification for the effort has sometimes been flawed by the influence of 1960s romanticism.

Posted by Brian Sorgatz at 3:28 PM

  • Blogger Robert Paulson left this comment at May 2, 2006 9:27 AM  
    Excellent post. How come in the left's view, smoking is bad, while recreational drug use is ok? I love how celebrities like River Phoenix practice veganism and drug use. Or like Laurie David drive a Prius, but use private jets. The right is also capable of staggering hypocracy, mostly regarding sexual matters. How about a compromise, no "sin taxes" on cigs, booze & gasoline, and plan B morning after pills stocked on pharmacy shelves.

  • Blogger Brian Sorgatz left this comment at May 2, 2006 1:16 PM  
    Robert,
    Thank you. In another comment, you’ve called yourself “libertarian on social issues (except drugs).” I invite you to consider the possibility that your opposition to libertarian drug policy is another example of the human moral sense gone haywire. (I don’t believe I’m sanctimonious on any politically important issue, but I have to admit in principle that I may be deluding myself.) As you look and listen here, you may wish to ask yourself whether any yes-buts that enter your mind are truly moral or just moralistic.

  • Blogger Brian Sorgatz left this comment at May 2, 2006 4:08 PM  
    Robert,
    I recommended the video clip before I’d seen the whole thing. Speaking of yes-buts, I think Sally Satel gives lots of them. Her nervous chuckles and fidgeting make me suspect that she knows this on some level.

  • Blogger Robert Paulson left this comment at May 3, 2006 9:48 AM  
    I'll be the first to admit that our nations drug laws are completey out of wack. The pot vs. alcohol/cigs is a good example. But, even if I agree with 99% of the libertarian take on drugs, I could never be a libertarian for one main reason, I believe in the death penalty. Nothing will ever change my mind on that.

  • Blogger Brian Sorgatz left this comment at May 3, 2006 1:15 PM  
    Robert,
    Libertarianism doesn’t philosophically entail any particular stand on the death penalty, does it? Didn’t Howard Stern run for governor of New York as a pro–death penalty Libertarian a while back?

  • Blogger Brian Sorgatz left this comment at November 6, 2007 3:55 PM  
    Update on my audio-video link in an earlier comment: Now this page at Cato.org has both the audio and the video of Jacob Sullum discussing drug policy.

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