To all of you who served or stayed behind as your son, daughter, husband, wife, mother or father served in our armed forces...THANK YOU! I am eternally grateful for your sacrifice.
To those of you who lost a loved one as they selflessly served our country, you have my deepest sympathy and respect. I can only hope you have been covered by God's abundant grace and mercy as you walked the lonely path of grief.
On May 1, 1945, the USS Terror was hit by a kamikaze, resulting in 171 casualties: 41 dead, 7 missing and 123 wounded. Dan was among the wounded, earning him a Purple Heart.
But what exactly were they fighting for? What type of freedom is worth dying for?
Somehow, I doubt many were risking their lives so Americans could have the freedom to publish and sell garbage like the ebook I just discovered being offered for download by Amazon.com. The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conduct, written by Philip R. Greaves II, is a filthy self-published guide offering advice to pedophiles. Since it contains no illustrations, it is not classified as child pornography, therefore, it is not considered illegal. Really?! Since when is any type of sexual relationship with a child legal? But in publishing a guide for pedophiles, there is an unspoken, but very LOUD, endorsement of this type of activity. And no matter how you look at it, "loving" a child in this way has to be classified as child abuse. Period.
Unfortunately, this is not the only book of this type being sold on Amazon.com. There are also the controversial books, Understanding Loved Boys and Boylovers and Could They All Have Been Wrong by David Riegel, more garbage condoning sex with children with arguments that sexual relationships between men and boys are perfectly natural and simply another expression of acceptable sexuality.
Interestingly enough, just three years ago, Amazon.com pulled a video game from their listings. RapeLay was just a bit too graphic for Amazon's tastes, I suppose. I mean after all, it is just not right to sell a video game where the main character rapes a mother and her daughters, now is it? Media and public outcry provoked a response from Amazon and the game is no longer available on their site.
So here is what I propose. Let us start a public outcry that garners some media attention and demand that these two books be pulled from the site as well. I am calling for a boycott of Amazon, who, until yesterday, advertised here on the blog. Close your accounts with Amazon, email them, email your family and friends, share this post, get your contacts on your social media sites buzzing and let's put an end to this nonsense.
Of course, I am not asking you to do this for me. I am asking you do this out of respect for those who sacrificed their lives for our freedom. After all, freedom comes with responsibility, and books encouraging the sexual abuse of children are nothing but irresponsible.
Now, before you start spouting off at me about First Amendment Rights, save your breath. There is nothing you could say to convince me that this type of garbage was what our forefathers had in mind when they penned the Constitution.
So, as you honor our veterans, both alive and dead, spend some time thinking about why they serve(d). It is about freedom, my friends. But somehow, Amazon.com is missing the boat, or in this case, the warship.
Thanking God for our veterans,
Hana
Amazon, Barnes & Noble and others keep crying censorship when prodded to not sell a given book. But not carrying a particular product, even if your reason is that the product is personally repugnant to you or most of your customers, is not censorship..
ReplyDeleteCensorship is the suppression of free speech. If not carrying a book is censorship, then the large majority of all material is censored because so much is not available at our libraries. Do Amazon et al carry EVERY book ever published? No. Is that censorship? No. It is a business decision about what will sell and make them money. Amazon chooses to sell pedophilia guides because they make the company money. If not selling a given book defines censorship, then in order to truly avoid it, every Barnes & Noble would have to be larger than the Library of Congress.
You might argue that it is not censorship to keep it out of their stores because it is available on their website. There is truth to this. But once you accept that there is no censorship if the material is still available elsewhere, you must accept that so long as there is ANY unimpeded outlet where the material is available, then it is not being censored. Free Speech does not include a distribution contract or monetary opportunity. This brings us back to booksellers like Amazon. They are neither the only outlet for any particular title, nor even an essential or necessary one.
Anyone can can get a domain, set up a web site and say whatever they want. They can even put their ebook up for sale without knowing a thing about website design or ecommerce. A website with shopping cart functions costs just a few dollars a month. You can have a website up and running in less time and with less effort than a set of Powerpoint slides. Further, any author can host a website on his home computer for free and sell or give away his wares as he chooses. All the tools to say what you want to say would remain unscathed if Amazon and every other bookseller went out of business tomorrow.
A corporation's decision to sell or not sell a product is just that. Johnson & Johnson is not crimping the second amendment by not selling AK47's next to the Baby Powder. NBC is not denying free speech when it does not serialize the book on pedophilia. Each is making a corporate decision about what they can and want to make money from. Amazon et al simply thought they could make money from this without anyone noticing because on line, unlike in a bricks and mortar store, you will likely never catch sight of the pedophilia aisle online unless you are looking for it.
Finally, Barnes & Noble and Amazon are not the institutions charged with defending free speech. The claim is simply hubris in service of profit at any cost. Each is a giant for-profit corporation which has decided to make money by facilitating the spread of evil actions, including rape and murder. Crying censorship when caught in this facillitation is a false argument and a distraction. Don't buy that from them either.