The Sickness Of Control.
We live in an age of control, where it seems everyone wants to control everyone else. Every day we slip further and further into a totalitarian prison world of censorship, taxation, rules & regulations, illegal mandates, forced injections, house arrest, and the erosion of Constitutional rights.
But while governments and NGO’s (non-government organizations) are largely responsible for this encroaching tyranny, many individuals are also working to limit our freedom and enact bans on things they disapprove of.
One example of this is a recent post on social media by GAB founder Andrew Torba. He said “If you thought the Babylonian whores melting down over losing their ability to murder babies was bad, just wait until we ban porn and you will see how men react.”
Torba’s GAB prides itself on being a free speech platform which, they claim, censors nothing but illegal content. So what does Torba mean when he says “wait until we ban porn”? Does he mean GAB will ban porn? I’ve never seen any porn on the site so he must mean he wants the government to make porn illegal, which is a misuse of power and a violation of our Bill of Rights, a document Torba claims he strongly supports. It’s also odd that he lumps abortions and porn into the same pot. While some may find porn to be distasteful or even vulgar, it’s hardly in the same category as chopping up an infant and sucking it out of a womb. Abortion is murder, but you’d be hard pressed to find a passage in the Bible that clearly defines dirty movies as sinful. Photos and videos didn’t even exist when the Bible was written. “Thou shalt not commit adultery” and “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife” are about as close as you’re going to get. It’s quite a stretch to believe those two commandments refer to looking at explicit images of people you don’t even know and who most likely posed for them voluntarily. Yes, some porn is produced through the exploitation of women and children, but so are clothing, shoes, and electronics, and we don’t ban those.
I didn’t write this to be a hit piece against Andrew Torba. He seems like a decent guy. I just happened to see his GAB post and it made me think about the idea of bans in general.
I began thinking how the obsession with banning things we don’t like is a worldwide sickness of control. We ban all kinds of things we disapprove of personally, whether it’s logical or not. We ban drugs, alcohol, sex, speech, menthol cigarettes, strolling in the park after dark, living in an RV on your own land, driving over an arbitrary speed limit based on nothing, cutting hair without a license, and even walking on the grass. And worse than the bans is our willing compliance with such nonsense.
In Torba’s case, it made me think about the slippery slope this all sits on. While GAB is proudly a free speech platform at the moment, Torba’s remark about banning porn reminded me that he is an “in your face” Christian, so I wonder how long it’s going to be before a desire to ban porn turns into a desire to ban anything else he interprets to be contrary to his faith. I get the impression that to Torba, your personal beliefs are wrong unless they conform with his. That’s the way it always seems to work out when dealing with hardcore adherents of any religious faith, Christian or not. It often applies to atheists, as well.
My libertarian nature makes me perfectly okay with Torba’s beliefs, the Pope’s beliefs, and your beliefs. But I would like to be left alone with my beliefs. And if I want to spend a few minutes watching a sordid video, that’s between me and my creator. It’s really none of your business. And the experience shouldn’t be banned just because you, or Torba, or anyone else, disagrees.
