In today’s ‘horrors of bad social science’, we have a piece by Jennifer S. Bryson, director of the Witherspoon Institute’s Islam and Civil Society Project, (which seems to be a conservative think-tank) who has written a piece for the Institute’s blog on the threat of pornography for national security. (No really.)
Bryson asks the question that no serious scholar has ever, ever addressed and comes up with an argument to be considered. In fact, she is getting right on top of this hard and pressing issue.She reaches around the boundaries of conventional thinking about terrorism and slowly but steadily penetrates the burning question as to whether pornography drives a serious challenge to National Security:
With the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks staring us in the face, we already know that our failure to have an approach to security that is robust and accurate has dire consequences. Pornography has long circulated nearly unbounded due to calls for “freedom,” but what if we are actually making ourselves less free by allowing pornography itself to be more freely accessible?
Are there security costs to the free-flow of pornography? If so, what are they? Are we as a society putting ourselves at risk by turning a blind eye to pornography proliferation?
I wonder further: Could it be that pornography drives some users to a desperate search for some sort of radical “purification” from the pornographic decay in their soul? Could it be that the greater the wedge pornography use drives between an individual’s religious aspirations and the individual’s actions, the more the desperation escalates, culminating in increasingly horrific public violence, even terrorism?
Let me tell you, now that we’ve been stirred to this threat – of young men somehow being converted to wicked, wicked ways – we need to act now, right here and now, damn it! Clearly the perpetrators of this filth have been very, very bad and need to be punished.
I believe that we all need to come together, scholars, government workers, NGOs, and throw caution to the wind. We need to straddle the division between us, fuse ourselves together and come up with an inspired solution. Let’s use each other to the very best of our abilities, and respond quickly to this vitally important need.
It’s Friday night so I’m just going to be at home thinking really long and hard about a solution to this problem. I’m just going to lie back right here by my lonesome self, thinking about nothing but pornography… for the sake of National Security.
You are brilliant. Loved this!
I think Ms. Bryson is just jerking us around.
That’s what she said.
Oh my god, you made a ‘reach around’ joke. Will you marry me? Wait, I’m already married. But she’s cool with it.
“Would those terabytes of pornography and such more aptly be dubbed “terrorbytes”?”
This article and your response have made my day.
I’m studying political science so that I too can one day write articles with this level of lucidity.
If pornography leads to terrorism, the CIA must think my house is in downtown Abbotabad.
I volunteer to confiscate this porn back from the fragile young minds of today’s youth.
Speaking of which, I based this on a somewhat true story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwyNpGWaE2Q
That video is bloody brilliant.
Thanks for providing a new example for the correlation does not mean causation lecture fo the intro class. The downside is you are making poli sci way too fun–expect more students to go to grad school just to be like the cool kids at the Duck (that would be Stephanie, Charli, Dan and Brian). Oh, and I do plan on a fe guest posts that have the “selling your soul to Satan” label.
Two things:
Porn beats Potter anyday. Stephanie will soon overtake Dan in reactions without the help of the Daily Dish. Suck it, Nexon.
Also, how can porn lead to terrorism? Shouldn’t those guys all be going blind? I don’t think you can be a blind terrorist.
Just wait until I trot out my secret weapon: Potter Slash Fiction and National Security!
66 reactions! Take that, boy wizard!
At the risk of sounding like I’m getting in bed with the nanny conservatives, we should certainly contemplate the exploitation of young men’s libidos in relation to terrorism.
Exploit them completely.
A very attractive satire. I’m tempted to give it two thumbs up!
No, No, she’s right. I’m totally in search of something to close the wedge that my use has driven between me now and me later.
Oh and when my search is over i should be a bonafide terrorist.