Tea at Trianon: The Perverts In Our Midst

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, December 3, 2019

The Perverts In Our Midst

From Matt Walsh:

Porn is obviously America’s favorite pastime. According to surveys, almost 80% of American men between the ages of 18 and 30 admit to watching porn regularly. Nearly 70% of men between 31 and 49 admit to it. Half of men from 50 to senior citizen age also confess to regular porn viewing. 30% of younger men say they watch porn every day. Porn viewership is not quite as common among women, but it’s far more common today than it was 10 years ago. Remember, too, this is just what people will admit to doing.

It’s no wonder that the porn industry is worth $97 billion, which is only slightly higher (about 100 times higher) than the $750 million it was worth 20 years ago. Today, porn grosses more in a year than Hollywood. It also brings in more money than the NFL, NBA, and MLB combined. And this is just “the porn industry” we’re talking about: meaning only the respectable, official sort of smut, starring people who have “porn star” on their W-2. If we were to quantify amateur porn and figure out what it’s all “worth” in dollars, who knows what the number would be. 200 billion? I have no idea.

The science is pretty clear that all this porn consumption is bad for the brain — it may even shrink your brain, according to some studies. It’s even worse for your marriage, with your chance of divorce doubling if you use porn. There is also a very clear and established link between sex predators and porn. It isn’t that watching porn will automatically turn you into a predator, but it’s no coincidence that rapists and pedophiles always begin with porn. You’d be hard pressed to find a criminal deviant in 2017 who didn’t begin by exploring his “fetish” in the freedom and anonymity of cyberspace. This is especially concerning when you consider some of the most popular porn search themes: namely, “incest” and “teens.”

You can read the studies and the statistics which I’ve provided in the links above. But you shouldn’t need to study the issue extensively to figure out if four and a half billion hours of porn is healthy for human beings individually and human society as a whole. It also doesn’t take a detective or a scientist to see how a guy who spends hours of his day indulging in perverse sexual fantasies may one day bring those fantasies into the “real world.” If you enjoy the simulated version of something, it means, obviously, there is something about the thing itself that you enjoy. Watching rape porn doesn’t make you a rapist, but it does make you the kind of person who finds something tantalizing in rape. Watching porn where the woman is deliberately made to look like a school girl doesn’t make you a pedophile, but it does make you the kind of person who gets turned on by pedophilia. (Read more.)