Defining the American Right Wing as fundamentally classical liberal means endorsing the Dinesh D'Souza/Jonah Goldberg model whereby a Catholic Reactionary Monarchist and a black feminist are both Leftists, a model that is utterly unhelpful. And putting the caveat that it's "true for American politics" doesn't help.
@The Name of Love I wish we could outlaw pornography, but I hesitate when I consider arguing for such a position because I recall the Tories of the early 19th century strongly against such a prohibition for customary reasons among the English, whose laws and culture directly influence our own. Why were English Tories in the Lords willing to defend the legality of pornography?
Probably because they judged the good of enacting the prohibition were outweighed by the evils that would ensue in its enforcement.
But in our modern society, I don't think that necessarily would be the case.
As for recreational drugs, I am torn. Totalitarian states have successfully suppressed them--nobody smokes Opium in China anymore, and that's unambiguously actually a virtue--but can we really say that's a success, or only incidental to the terrible system of totalitarianism there?
There's nothing totalitarian about prohibition of recreational drugs. That said, I don't think the good of prohibiting drugs outweighs the injustice of the modern Chinese regime.
I didn’t say that non-procreative sex would cause the downfall of society. If everyone was gay it would, either from lack of reproduction or from lack of stable families assuming reproduction was still taking place. Though the main cause of lack of stable families and lack of children are straight people who don’t get married, get divorced, and choose not to have children.
I have no objection to non-procreative sex as long as enough procreative sex is happening. For example, a married couple has sex and gets pregnant, for the next year getting pregnant isn’t an option, but there is nothing wrong with sex during that time. There is nothing wrong with a straight married couple engaging in sexual acts that can’t result in pregnancy. I extend that thinking to non-heterosexuals as well.
I’m not sure that I accept the idea of natural ends, or if there were such a thing if it would be both universally applicable and desirable.
To prohibit non-procreative sexual wed need to ban birth control too, along with anal and oral sex. Do we really want a nation where the government takes interests in such things?
I would say that in western nations that we are in fact using too much birth control and that we need to have more kids. That doesn’t mean that everybody needs to have kids. Some people, for what ever reason, are not suited for that life choice and maybe sexual proclivities is why. As long as the majority has enough children then outliers don’t matter.
If procreation is such a goal that we punish gays, should we not also ban priests and monks? Wouldn’t we need to have government enforced arranged marriages for the chronically single?
Okay.
First, people don't get married or have children because out modern society generally promotes not doing that. There are numerous online articles published and promoted in mainstream press telling people not to have children because they'd make you unhappy or cause global warming or whatever. We have an economic policy tries to push as many people as possible to live in tiny pods in cities just to earn a decent living. Housing prices are way up. Mass immigration drives down wages. No-fault divorce, contraception, and abortion destroy any incentive for women and men to stay together, and feminism has done absolutely nothing to stem this. Our welfare system practically incentivizes women to become single mothers. And to top it all off, our current regime seems content with labeling anyone who tries to fix the above problems as a racist, sexist, homophobic bigot that hates poor people.
So, the problem is a bit more than "straight people not getting married." It's more like our entire society seems to be designed to prevent that outcome.
Second, you can have no problem with non-procreative sex all you want. Our society still promotes it for the reasons I listed above.
Third, natural ends do exist.
I have an essay on why that's the case, if you are curious. To summarize: saying natural ends don't exist is the equivalent of saying that the heart's purpose is not to pump blood or that the eye's purpose is not to see, so it already goes against what common sense would tell us. Final causation also underpins efficient causation; to say that X has a tendency to cause Y is the same as saying Y is X's end. So if an acorn didn't really have a tree as its end, then you couldn't say why acorns turned into trees. For all you know, they could turn into chicken soup or something.
Now you are correct in the case of artificial things. Those things have ends, but their ends are a matter of convention rather than of nature. For example, the end of the vines is to grow around a tree and perform photosynthesis, but if Tarzan creates a hammock out of the vines, the vines' end doesn't change. But that gets us into Aristotle's distinction between art and nature isn't really relevant to ethics.
Fourth, you strawman my position as "everything that's immoral should be illegal." Regardless, I do regard birth control, anal sex, and all forms of oral sex that don't end in the penis ejaculating into the vagina to be immoral, and I do believe that a good society prohibit those things, either through means of social shaming or through law. I would refer you to how I view the nature between ethics and politics above. There is nothing wrong, however, with having sex with your married spouse while pregnant or priestly celibacy though; in neither case is the natural end being violated.
Please DM me on this sometime. I'd be happy to explain my ethics to you.
I’m not completely convinced. From that link I can’t see any of the details of the studies and I consider the source biased. Though, I’ll assume that pornography does have some negative effects. How influential are they? How can we quantify this? In the USA, the great majority of young men view pornography and yet rates of violent crime have been going down for years. I’m not saying that is the cause, but it does seem to counteract the claim that pornography leads to sexual violence when pornography is more common than ever before but violence is rare.
Then even assuming we could agree with the goal of banning pornography, how can it be done? The internet makes doing just about impossible. Either the laws would be a joke or draconian tactics would have to be used. Either would be bad. The government as it is now (or in the foreseeable future) is more likely to use such powers given to ban pornography to quash dissenters.
I don't know what will convince you, and I frankly don't really care to convince you. I only want you to understand where I'm coming from. And from where I'm sitting, the evidence is overwhelming that pornography is harmful to the people that use it, at least as much as any recreational drug, and it also undermines the virtue of the citizenry.
As for what concrete measures the government ought to take, I'm unsure. You are correct in saying that we must be careful in what exact legislation is implemented and not rush to just "do something!" But to say that it must always result in either failure or tyranny is kind of dogmatic to me.
