Jennifer Bryson has a very intriguing article on the Public Discourse blog today. She reports at first the disturbing fact that among terrorists that have been caught or killed recently (Osama Bin Laden included) there has been a significant amount of pornography confiscated from their media. She uses the rest of the piece to ask the question, should this link be examined more closely? Bryson quotes an article about the former Yugoslavia where writer Andrea Dworkin submits a very frightening progression: “”pornography functioned as instruction in “a way of being: dehumanization of women; bigotry and aggression harnessed to destroying the body of the enemy; invasion as a male right.”"
Here’s what I think is part of the crux of Ms. Bryson’s article:
Consider an ideology like a seed and the disposition of the mind like soil. The particular nature of the seed determines what may become of it. Yet at the same time, the elements of the soil are part and parcel of shaping the manner in which the particular seed grows. A seed in toxic soil can grow into a terrible distortion of the plant it is meant to become. What happens when a radical ideology adheres in a pornography-saturated mind?
I think this is a very important question she raises and definitely something our government agencies should explore. Read the whole thing.
