The greatest irritation in the discussion over government-imposed mandatory internet filtering in Australia is the framing in which the debate is conducted. The common perception is that the proposed filter is the doing of backward Christian conservatives who supposedly favour government bans on a wide variety of vices, and that opposition to the filter is epitomised in the secular left who see themselves as the enlightened protectors of civil liberties. Such a perception is garnered from the distorted coverage of the mainstream media and spills over into the echo chamber of some popular Australian internet forums. The framing of a debate in the mainstream media is a commonly employed, underhanded tactic to drive the debate itself. Internet filtering is no different.
The most important thing to point out is that government internet filtering takes moral education out of the realm of the family and places it into the realm of the government. What I mean by this is that instead of the family deciding what material is appropriate for their child and enforcing restrictions themselves (perhaps via the aid of voluntary associations or purchases), they are forced to pay taxes to the government and a bureaucrat does this job instead. The traditional family is supposed to be one of the pillars of conservatism, and this filter further weakens the family’s role. Alarm bells should start ringing when more and more of what collectively forms the upbringing of our children is controlled by government and not by Mums and Dads.
To further highlight these points, we can look back to the man who should be the ideological arch-enemy of all conservatives, Karl Marx. What were Marx’s views on the family and the place it should have in the upbringing of children? Marx saw the family unit as one of the primary obstructions to imposing communism and proposed its abolition, in no uncertain terms, in his Communist Manifesto (1848). Parents have an everyday, personal relationship with the child that, in a healthy society, goes well outside the reach of government bureaucrats. The parents are the key to passing on social, cultural, and religious ideals that will greatly affect the child’s personality and morality. Any watering down of the family unit and its realm of control is therefore favoured by the communist left as an incremental move in their direction. The communist plan has always been to effectively confiscate children from their parents at the earliest possible stage and place them into ‘social’ education, meaning communist propaganda schools. The government internet censorship moves us yet further in this direction.
We often hear Senator Conroy accusing opponents of the filter of being in favour of child pornography. This accusation is the little demagogic trick he keeps up his sleeve, when he gets nervous at press conferences. Well, in the same vein as Mr Conroy, let me just say that given the above information, I should then accuse anyone in favour of the filter of being a communist. Most reasonable people recognise that the problem with child pornography is that the child is abused in the first place. Perhaps Labor should consider spending less money on rort-fests like home insulation and BER, and send some more to the states for better policing of things like child pornography. Not that socialised policing is any good either, but it'd be a step up from totalitarian mandatory filtering.
The second major point is that it has become obvious that this internet filter is aimed specifically at censoring conservative voices on the internet. Anti-abortion websites were some of the earliest websites put on the blacklist. We also see the beginnings of an enforcement grid for left-wing political correctness. The internet has provided conservatism a bastion, free from the shackles of the politically correct mainstream media. In the United States it is conservatives who have used the internet to massive success, epitomised by the Presidential campaign (and subsequent organisation, Campaign for Liberty) of Congressman Ron Paul. Conservative principles are invariably hated among elites occupying high positions in the mainstream media. Whether they are leftist elites or neocon elites, most journalists love the idea of an “enlightened” class ruling over the people with an iron fist, whether through the welfare state or the warfare state or both.
The reality is that there are no moral limitations on free expression. If you are not physically damaging somebody’s person or property, or abusing children, then what you are doing is within the realm of free expression. Often, limitations on free expression are proposed to facilitate the silencing of a particular political group at the behest of an opposing group or a majority in the general population. People might remain silent because they believe the restriction does not apply to them and hence is not of concern. The folly of this attitude is summed up in a famous statement from World War II about the silence of German intellectuals during the Nazi rise to power:
"THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up."
The debate over internet censorship also neatly highlights the difference between individual liberty and democracy, something that is not obvious to the lay political observer nor many young, loudmouth leftists on internet forums. Individual liberty means that you have certain inalienable freedoms as an individual that cannot be taken away, even if a majority of the population believes any of those freedoms ought to be taken away. Pure democracy means that decisions are made solely on majority opinion, with no regard for the inalienable freedoms of individual human beings. In many polls, when Australians are asked if they favour internet censorship, we usually see of strong majority in favour. However despite the majority opinion, internet censorship infringes on the inalienable freedom of expression of each unique individual human being.
We see left-wingers spout “democracy!” when it suits their agenda, but fall completely silent when it doesn’t. For example, when the government forces me to hand over my hard-earned money in taxes, so that they can be sure they’ll get their ‘free’ socialised healthcare, then they are all for it. In this circumstance, the population is with them, so they spout their ‘democracy!’ rhetoric. However when the government wants to force something they don’t like, and the majority of Australians are in favour, they switch over and latch onto the civil libertarian vein, like opportunistic parasites.
The lies, hypocrisy and opportunism are quite sickening, but such is to be expected from that side of politics. Filthy ideology equates to filthy tactics.
All hope is not lost, however, on internet censorship. We have seen, in the past year or so, a very slow but none-the-less surprising, awakening by some in the “Liberal” Party, which claims to be the party carrying on the tradition of classical liberalism and conservatism in this country (a proclamation made by none other than its big-spending, neocon, former leader John Howard). The awakening is epitomised in Senator Cory Bernardi, a staunch conservative, who had an epiphany on the issue of internet censorship, succinctly describing the conservative underpinning of his reasoning:
“There are ... philosophical reservations about allowing government to be the ultimate judge of what people should and should not have access to. I believe in small government – not big brother where personal responsibility is subservient to the State.”
“There is no stronger supporter of families than myself... However, I also believe that in most circumstances, families know better than government what is best for their children. Parental responsibility cannot and should not be abrogated to government – if it is, our society will only become weaker.”
This is an eloquent defence of a principled stand. It is almost impossible to fathom that these words came out of a federal politician in this country. We hope Senator Bernardi can convince his fellow Liberals to oppose compulsory government internet filtering, and to do so based on both liberal and conservative values.
Postscript: It is now clear the Coalition will oppose mandatory internet filtering. Well done, for once.
