Well, what about pop culture, anyway?

Every liberal I know of thinks the conservative attempt to deflect blame for gun violence from their presence in our society in the millions in private hands onto improper diagnosis of and care for the mentally ill and the prevalence of violence in mass culture makes exactly as much sense as it would if we were talking about gun carnage among children in schoolyards and the conservatives were trying to prevent efforts to disarm the kids.

"Guns don't kill people," they say. "People do."

Exactly right!

People kill people!

Only a fool would want it to be easy.

Only a fool or a transparent enemy of mankind.

Adult humans, just like children, cannot as a rule safely be trusted with anything sharper than a table spoon, let alone firearms.

All the same, the conservatives are surely right that popular culture is also a culprit.

Just as no responsible parent wants his children exposed to material exalting or encouraging violence no sane adult wants the adults around him imbibing a steady diet of such poison, either.

But over the years the liberals have got themselves painted into a corner on this question, having invented and entrenched constitutional interpretations and dogmas that are serious obstacles to regulation – that is to say, censorship – of pop culture by any level of government, even if not aimed at policing up pornography, obscenity, and profanity in the name of good Christian morals.

So much the worse for all of us.

Our lies come back to bite us in the backside, sometimes.

Look back on the pop culture of the years between the adoption of the Motion Picture Code and the destruction of censorship by the Supremes in the last half of the 20th Century.

Listen to pop music of the 1930's as far as the early 70's.

There's a reason Woody Allen has preferred big band music all his life.

But folk and even rock were at any rate not the screamingly successful threat to society so much contemporary pop music is.

PS.

I realize this is ultimately a judgment call and I trust the government more than I trust the ordinary run of ordinary mankind.

Conservatives, echoing Juvenal, claim not to.

"Who will police the police?" he demanded, arguing against the wisdom of having a police force.

And yet no one but the maddest libertarian today has the least doubt we need and are much better off with police than without.

See the point?

And, after all, how bad can it get so long as the government isn't overthrown by loons intent on dictatorship?

(And how much good would these blowhards do if it was?)