has been romanticized as a time of strict moral and social values and restraint; the Law apparently took a dim view of what it considered perversion at the time. The laws repressed every form of behavior that wasn’t officially approved. This might lead you to think that Victorians were prim and proper gentlefolk who went about their business with dignity and grace, pausing only now and then to admire some new steampunk device (Only I suppose it wasn’t steampunk then)
The real truth of the matter is that nothing could have been further from the truth. That amount of sexual repression, and the perversion is like a high pressure steam line, the excess has to go somewhere. The Victorian era (Which coincided with the growth of Photography) saw the first widely distributed porn. Oh, there was hand drawn porn prior to that, but not the quality and certainly not the volume.
It wasn’t just porn, either, what people got up to during those times was well documented- for instance, in the private diaries of henry Spencer Ashbee (“Walter” in ‘My Secret Life”) and the observations of Richard von Kraft Ebbing (“Psychopathia sexualis”) in the mid to late 1800’s.
These two books are the Perverts Bible, both old and new testament. What can’t be found in the one is detailed in the other. All seven “Normal” sexes, all the kinks, all the fetishes, from autoerotic asphyxiation straight through to xenophilia.
There’s a feeling that today’s pervert is much more than ever, but it’s not true, read those books and you’ll find that- like children who have more fun with the boxes than with the toys- the Victorians had only their imaginations to go on. And did they ever go on. There isn’t anything you can imagine that they didn’t do, other than the things we now need technology for. And they more than made up for it. And it isn’t just sex, the topics of birth control and abortion are (Obviously) foremost in their minds as well. So a LOT of that went on. At a time when even the sex-obsessed Japanese were still coyly giggling behind their upheld fans at pictures of samurai with impossibly large peckers giving it to ritually complaining girls with equally impossibly huge genitalia, the Brits and Europeans were inventing new ways to have sex that we haven’t even begun to understand today any more than everyone completely understands what Hendrix was doing half the time.
Where is all this leading? Hold on to your butts, this is where it gets weird.
The liberal left has latched on to ‘Libertarianism” and has it completely and fully in it’s grasp. “Good Libertarians” aren’t just interested in being fiscally left alone, they feel they have the right to tell their candidates how to behave on their personal level.
What? Og you’re insane! That’s the OPPOSITE of libertarianism.
Well, no,, actually, it isn’t. The Left has carefully instructed Libertarians in how Libertarian candidates should act, and any mention of their own morals or ideas immediately disqualifies them from anything. “I’ll never vote for one of those asshole Christians because they’re too busy telling people what they can or can’t do in their private lives”
There have been few more ignorant ideas in the world, and these are particularly ignorant having been generated- in the main- by liberals.
See, there’s a couple dirty little secrets you may not understand, if you’re an idiot.
First of all, even Conservatives get up to some real kink in their private lives. And they do some weird stuff, and always have- as the writings of Ashbee and Von Kraft Ebbing illustrate. Everyone is a little kinky in their own way. And a damned large number of those fine people will, when their daughter gets knocked up, take her to an abortion clinic. Not all, but enough that there will never be anyone clamoring for it to become illegal in large enough numbers to “Take away your rights as a woman!!” (Jesus, that makes me want to slap people when I hear that. What if the infant growing inside you is also a woman, aren’t her rights being infringed?)
Sure, there are a few small groups who are vociferous and sometimes even nasty, but to accuse them of trying to impose their morality is a shibboleth of the left and the left alone.
Bottom line: Conservatives will not be in a big hurry to impose their morality on anyone. The left is not afraid of having morality imposed, it is the morality itself that they fear. And they have done an excellent job of instilling that fear in this generations libertarian party liberal apparatchiks. If the uptight Victorians who had to put pants on table legs to keep men from becoming aroused were unable to stamp out perversion prior to 1900, they sure aren’t going to be able to in 2012, and only a fool would try, and everyone capable of reasoned thought knows it. The leaders on the right aren’t makingthe discussion about abortion, or gay marriage, or whatever, the left is, because they know that the American public is easily distracted by it. And everyone takes the bait every time. And then accuses the right of making the debate about that instead of more important things.
We’ve done a bit better this time with that, the leftist shibboleths haven’t resonated as much as they have in the past, at least partially because Romney is a leftist in his own right, in many ways. So they can’t gain as much traction.

So: Where am I going with this? Let me turn to DeToqueville:

a despot easily forgives his subjects for not loving him, provided they do not love each other

Each time we go to elect someone for anything, the socialist indoctrination arm (Schoolteachers) and the propaganda arm (Media) and the enforcment arm (Unions) of the left damage the character of anyone valuable or worthwhile in any way they can, knowing full well that the well trained apparatchiks on the right and in the middle will do as they’ve been taught and disdain them for what they’ve ben taught to disdain them for. Used to be it was all about big business, or war, but these days people are beginning to get wise to the reality of those situations, so morals and religion are the target of the day.
Remember that dirty little secret? that nobody is going to stop you from being intimate with your cousin Al, or jamming lit candles into various orifices(Orifii?) whilst crooning? Hunt you down and make you give up your collection of oiled midget porn? Well, they aren’t. And the Moral people the press are attempting to assassinate in your eyes are not the ones making an issue of gay marriage or abortion, the media is.
At the end of the day, no matter how much you may hate Romney, no matter how much the media has trained you to be distrustful of him or anyone like him, no matter how you may assume he’s going to do that one silly religious thing that’s just going to make you insane with the rage the left has trained you to have:
It’s a hell of a lot easier to prevent Romney from interfering with abortion, or gay marriage, or whatever, than is has been to keep the Won from fucking this country up the tailpipe.

So if you’re concerned that you long for someone to vote “For” instead of “Against”, remember that in this- as in any presidential election, it is not a President for whom you vote; you vote for Freedom. The ways in which Romney might threaten your freedom are far more manageable than the ways Obama already has. Everything else is a distraction to keep us from noticing that our freedoms are being gradually removed.

Me, I’m not voting for Romney or against Obama. I’m voting for the person who I know can get elected who I expect to do the most to preserve freedom.
Want to vote ‘For” instead of “Against”? Vote for freedom.
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