By: Ved Prakash
Written: January 2004
It is no secret that today the major powers in the world are the countries of the West. The United States of America, Britain, Germany, France, Russia and other countries of the West are the strongest military powers. These countries are not only advanced militarily, but also economically and politically. These countries have adopted the democratic political system which is far superior to the dictatorial systems preached by Lenin and Stalin and Mao Tse Tung, or monarchist systems practised in many countries.
The foreign policies of Geroge W. Bush, President of the U.S. are being criticized as being militaristic by some people who claim to love peace.
However the fact is that a country with weak miliary power is respected by no one. History has proven time and again that such a country is soon subjugated by nations with stronger miltary power.
But the sad fact is that the Western societies are facing the danger of being weakened not by an outside enemy but by internal policies such as tolerance of vices such as pornography.
In the West, pornography is well tolerated by the government and the authorities. This is perhaps because of the public acceptance of pornography as an unavoidable thing. It has been found that certain web sites that are politically offensive have been shut down but the web sites that peddle pornography and nudity remain not only active but grow by each passing day.
These web sites corrupt the minds of our people, especially the young whose minds are impressionable. Some people say that the former US President Bill Clinton could not keep his pants zipper from falling down. But how could he? Whatever bad things he did as a President he learnt in his childhood when he was growing up in a society where pornography and sex talk was everywhere.
We are not suggesting that we should return to the moral norms of bygone days or that of the Taleban of Afghanistan who brutally killed women who committed adultery. What we are saying is that pornography should be strictly controlled.
Our children have a right to grow up in an environment that inspires them to achieve, that instills them with lofty ideas of serving the humanity through excellence in science and technology, and the arts, desire for service to humanity, and that does not corrupt them with base ideas of unrestricted pleasure seeking and hedonism as preached by pornographic web sites.
It is the government that has the power, and we, the adults, who have the responsibility to protect the children of our society. If we do not protect them, when they grow up, they will rightly accuse us of having abandoned our responsibilities.
At this time, it is of vital importance to clean up the Internet so that children are not able to access pornographic sites that only corrupt their minds.
Click here to go to page of moralityinmedia.org that describes in detail the harmful effects of pornography.
Why Internet porn is so much more dangerous?
Here is a quotation from the essay mentioned above:
"In the past five years porn on the Internet has virtually exploded in volume and is now the leading source of pornographic materials worldwide. Some of my porn addict patients inform me that the Internet has three major advantages in feeding their addictive sexual illnesses. They call them the three "A's": It's easily Accessible, Affordable, and Anonymous.
I have had boys in their early teens getting into this wasteland with really disastrous consequences. They told me they actively search for porn on the Internet, keying in on such words as sex, nudity, pornography, obscenity, etc. Then, once they have found how to access it they go back again and again, just like drug addicts."
Why some people say that pornography has no effect ?
Here is a quotation from the essay mentioned above:
"Some of the "experts" who publicly suggest that pornography has no effects are just unaware of the research and studies suggesting harm. Others really do not believe what they are asserting. Still others will only reluctantly admit to the possibility of harm from "violent pornography." In some cases, they are pretending not to know because of their concern over what they falsely believe is censorship or loss of First Amendment rights. Some fear the tyranny of a moralist minority who might take away their rights to view and use pornography, then later take away free speech and expression.
Some are themselves sex addicts with a hidden agenda behind their public posturing. Thus, for some of them, the issue is political. It also has to do with their personal values and much less with what any contrary evidence might suggest."
Do not be fooled by people who say that pornography is not really harmful.
Here is a quotation from the essay mentioned above:
"Some Americans strongly hold the belief that pornography, while it may be vulgar and tasteless, is still essentially harmless and has no real effect on the viewer. However, for someone to suggest that pornography cannot have an effect on you is to deny the whole notion of education, or to suggest that people are not affected by what they read and see. If you believe that a pornographic book or film cannot affect you, then you must also say that Karl Marx's Das Kapital, or the Bible, or the Koran, or advertising have no effect on their readers or viewers.
Astute businessmen do not spend billions of dollars a year on advertising if their visual and verbal messages and imagery did not motivate people to buy deodorant or diapers or automobiles. The key question is, not whether, but what kind of an effect does pornography have?"