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Comment by petedoyle | Hacker News Reader

Neither the dailycaller.com article nor the statement on ricksantorum.com mention SOPA or ISP filtering. They also don't mention creating new laws (which a president cannot do as part of the executive branch).

Santorum's statement mentions that he'd appoint an Attorney General (also in the executive branch) that would enforce existing obscenity laws.

Its fine to disagree with Santorum on this, but its a bit misleading to say he'd force ISPs to filter content (or that he'd have the power to do so).

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True.

Santorum is just the most recent incarnation of the moral majority that want to dictate how you should act in your private life. Part of the same group that screams about the government intruding on gun rights, religious rights, etc. A hypocrite.

While, I am hopeful he won't get the votes to event be considered for the GOP nominee, I do hope someone like Larry Flynt will crawl out and destroy yet another moralist.

What happens between consenting adults in their private lives has nothing to do the government.

A long time optimist (and citizen of) that people in the US will do the right thing, I am glad that I have an exit opportunity to saner parts of the world.

The fact that Santorum and his brand of politics has traction , on some level, scares me.

What happens between consenting adults in their private lives has nothing to do the government.

Most people who say this don't really believe this. Should I be allowed to pay a consenting adult $3/hour to clean my bedroom, while I talk about how much I dislike people of $PROTECTED_CLASS?

[edit: to clarify my position, I have no objection to any consensual activities between adults. This includes gay sex, low wage labor, unlicensed medicine, etc.]

I must not understand what you're asking here but what's wrong with that? If someone wanted to work for $3/hour, why not let them?

Because the minimum wage is higher than $3/hour.

It think you missed his point that he doesn't believe in minimum wage. At least that what I get from his comment.

Yes that's right. Not that I don't believe in minimum wage, per se, but that I don't believe in laws generally that prevent people from interacting with each other in accordance with each person's self interest.

Or if I want to avoid pedantic arguments, maybe I should say "perceived" self interest. I'm sure there are many paternal government supporters who will do their best to convince a jobless poor person that it's actually bad to work for a rate that some bureaucracy doesn't like.

When you bring money and power dynamics into the equation, he notion of consent gets complicated. Consent means free engagement in activity not due to pressure, economic, social, or otherwise. A parent and child or student and teacher having sex is frowned upon by many liberals, not because they are prude, but because they believe consent is not possible in that case.

Yes, liberals have justifications for their preferred intrusions on personal freedom just as conservatives do.

And in both cases, I believe that their appeals to personal freedom are mostly intellectually dishonest post-hoc justifications for pre-existing beliefs.

A parent and child...

You'll note that in my post, I explicitly referred to consenting adults (just as jmspring did). Is there some reason you believe these two adults are capable of consenting to gay sex on film in return for money, but those same two adults are incapable of consenting to cleaning bedrooms and listening to racial epithets for less money?

You're right, claiming Santorum openly supports SOPA style content filtering is hyperbole with no basis in his actual statement (http://www.ricksantorum.com/enforcing-laws-against-illegal-p...). Admittedly though, it is a potential outcome.

dailycaller.com:

"To black out foreign sites, Santorum would likely need legislative action requiring Internet service providers to use “a mandatory filter set up by the government or by the service providers,” said Volokh."

Thanks, I missed that. Still, Santorum's statement did not mention a desire to go after foreign sites (which would require something like SOPA or an international treaty). The Daily Caller just mentioned that his enforcement of existing laws wouldn't affect international sites.

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