Censorship Express

Back when Ayn Rand wrote about "obscenity" laws in "Censorship, Local and Express," prosecutions were already on the wane, part of a general rebirth of freedom in America in the 1970s and 80s. When the Bush administration revived obscenity laws, there had been no prosecutions for nearly three decades. At the same time, the Christianist (ex-"Republican") majority in the US Congress jacked off the minimum penalty for possession of "obscene" drawings to five years without parole in federal prison - exactly the same as for buying photos, of actual children being raped, from the rapists. Now, a manga collector has been indicted for possession of "obscenity" and faces this penalty in a US Federal Court.

Please, no silly stuff that this is not really really Theocracy in action, because in a real Christian theocracy a reader of off-color Japanese comix would be burned at the stake, rather than face a mere five-year minimum prison sentence. Shall we thank the Environmentalists for keeping it that way, albeit only from fear of deforestation, which would surely follow if the US Government had to burn all the readers of politically incorrect books and comix with fires started from kindling? I'm not sure. In what I know of history, every regime that started by burning books got to burn human corpses before it was through.