Protecting Children is Not Censorship, It's Civilization

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 In this episode, we take on the absurd claim that shielding children from pornography and graphic content is "censorship." Jordan Rickards makes the case that protecting childhood innocence is not just common sense—it's the foundation of civilization itself. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Conservative Opinion Podcast
brought to you byConservativeOpinioncom.
Now here's your host, jordanRickards.
Welcome to the ConservativeOpinion Podcast brought to you
by ConservativeOpinioncom.
This is your host, jordanRickards.
Today we're talking aboutsomething that should be obvious
, but in this upside-downculture needs to be said out

(00:21):
loud Protecting children fromsexually explicit content is not
censorship, it's civilization.
How should I put this?
Delicately, it takes a specialsort of moral idiot to confuse
censorship with common sense.
Yet we live in an age whereshielding children from sexually
explicit content is likened,with straight-faced indignation,
to the suppression of freespeech.

(00:42):
That would be like claimingthat keeping liquor, cigarettes
and cocaine out of a child'sreach constitutes starvation.
One wonders how such mindsmanage to tie their own
shoelaces in the morning withoutmistaking the act for some sort
of fascist repression.
Let's begin with the obvious.
Real censorship pertains to therestriction of information from

(01:03):
adults, those presumed topossess judgment, autonomy and
moral agency.
A ban on political books, aprohibition on religious dissent
, a restriction on art these arematters rightly called
censorship.
They involve the stifling ofadult inquiry, debate and
conscience.
Children, by contrast, are notsovereign individuals, not in

(01:26):
the full sense.
They are still in formation.
Their judgment is untempered,their appetites untrained, their
instincts easily led To imaginethat a child is entitled to the
full buffet of adultmaterial—pornography, graphic
violence, nihilisticself-harm—in the name of liberty
is to adopt the ethics of awolf regarding a lamb.

(01:48):
It's not freedom, it'spredation.
It is the strong preying uponthe weak while congratulating
themselves for theirhigh-mindedness.
For goodness sake, it's calledadult material for a reason, and
it's not because it'sespecially appropriate for
adults, but because it isdefinitely inappropriate for
children.
Our society already, and withoutcontroversy, bars minors from

(02:11):
activities that would be ruinousif indulged prematurely.
They may not buy cigarettes,they may not rent cars, they may
not gamble, they may not drink,drive, enlist in the army or
vote.
Nobody, except a few shriekingcranks, calls this tyranny.
We understand that a childneeds time to grow into the full
dignity and the heavyresponsibilities of freedom, but

(02:34):
somehow, when it comes tosexually explicit material, the
rules change.
This is the one area we aretold where children must be
trusted to exercise discretion.
This is the one area we aretold where children must be
trusted to exercise discretion.
That's not inconsistency,that's an agenda.
It's not about the child'srights.
It's about erasing childhoodinnocence as an obstacle to
adult gratification.

(02:55):
If it's now censorship to keeppornography and graphic
obscenity out of schools andlibraries.
Then what of the home?
Are parents guilty of bookbanning for refusing to stock
their shelves with Penthouse,hustler and Snuff films?
For balance, if we are to betruly liberated, why stop at the
schoolhouse door?
Let the liquor cabinets bethrown open, let the heroin

(03:16):
syringes be passed around.
Let the backyards becomecockfighting rings, after all,
and anything less would becensorship, and we can't have
that.
This nonsense only survives bycorrupting the very language we
use to think clearly.
It depends, like so much modernKant, on the deliberate
inversion of words.
Freedom becomes license,protection becomes oppression,

(03:39):
guarding becomes censoring.
Orwell had a phrase for thisthe defense of the indefensible.
We must not indulge suchdishonesty.
To protect children is notmerely permissible, it is
obligatory.
To leave them exposed to whatthey are unequipped to
comprehend, let alone.
Withstand, is not liberation,it is abdication.

(04:01):
Civilization exists preciselybecause we shield what is
precious, and childhood, in allits fragile glory, is among the
first of these treasures.
Adults may quarrel endlesslyabout their rights, but to
pretend we owe nothing specialto the young, that's not
progress, it's decay.
When a society no longerdistinguishes between the needs

(04:22):
of a child and the wants of anadult, it announces its own
exhaustion.
There is no shame in drawinglines.
In fact, civilization is theart of drawing lines between the
sacred and the profane, theinnocent and the corrupt, the
garden and the desert.
To extend adult freedoms tochildren does not honor freedom,
it cheapens it.

(04:43):
True liberty demands virtue,and virtue must be taught,
tended and protected.
Protecting children fromsexually explicit content is not
censorship.
It is the bare minimum a sanesociety must do to preserve its
future.
A culture that cannot draw thatline has not only lost its mind
, it has forfeited its soul.

(05:03):
Thanks for listening.