Like A Stopped Clock Dennis Prager May Be Correct This Time

(My original title said he “May Be Right” but Prager is always far, far right and almost always wrong.)

It’s always fun ratioing Dennis Prager, as oily a sac of human excrement that ever slid through the American body politic, but a statement he made three years ago yet only getting wide circulation now is being misread and misunderstood.

In April of 2023 Prager appeared on Matt Fradd’s Pints with Aquinas, a Catholic themed podcast, and according to Google’s AI opined that:

“Viewing animated child [CSAM] ‘can't be evil’ because it features no real victims…Prager argued that ‘evil’ requires a tangible victim and action, stating, ‘You can't be evil, you didn't do evil if you thought evil.  You did evil if you committed it,’ according to sources.  When asked if masturbating to animated [CSAM would not be considered]  evil, Prager responded, ‘That's correct,’ arguing that without a real victim, it does not constitute evil.”

(I have compared the AI summary with the actual video and it is accurate; brackets indicate slight rewording on my part for clarity.)

First off, before we proceed any further, let us state the obvious: 

Harming an actual child in any manner for personal pleasure is illegal, immoral, and unethical.

Period.

Full stop.

Elsewhere Prager agrees with that very point, and good for him for doing so.

The crossed line Prager argues about is that while animated CSAM appeals to the same prurient interest as genuine CSAM, it legally should constitute a different category since it does not involve an actual child being harmed, nor does it physically harm the person viewing it (“animated” for our purposes will include traditional animation, CGI, and AI generated images and video).

For Prager, “evil” is confined to actual acts that cause real harm to real people.  Simulated harm to imaginary characters may be deplorable, but not actually evil.

Host Matt Fradd’s counterarguments are that it makes real world CSAM more acceptable, that it poisons the person viewing and presumably getting off on it, and that theologically it is just as bad as actually doing the act (this is something Jesus taught, so biblically he’s on solid ground here).

There’s no argument that for the vast majority of people, viewing animated CSAM is disgusting and those who enjoy it are creepy, but Prager’s position is not without relevance.

There are people who enjoy films and videos where fictional humans die in a vast variety of horrific ways.  If enjoying animated CSAM is the equivalent of actually harming a child, wouldn’t enjoying an Agatha Christie mystery or a serial killer movie or a horror film be the equivalent of enjoying a real murder?

Or is the fig leaf of the perpetrator being punished or killed at the end enough to cover that enjoyment?

The obvious problem is if a movie is successful, the killer -- human or monster -- is likely to come back in some manner to gleefully murder and mutilate again, rendering the initial retribution meaningless.

And what about a disaster movie where tens / hundreds / thousands / millions / billions of people die horribly?  Typically there’s no deliberate evil intent in these disasters, but audiences get a kick out of people dying horrible, screaming deaths.

Does that make those audiences morally culpable in their demise?

Let’s lower the stakes a notch.  What about crime films where a gang plans and executes an elaborate scheme to steal other people’s money and possessions ///and get away with it///.  Does enjoying the antics of Danny Ocean make one a fellow felon?

Let’s drop another notch.  Does being a pro wrestling fan make one complicit in the wholly scripted and staged performances of equally scripted unreal on-air personas?

And if it does, what does that say about audiences who enjoy the Royal Shakespeare Company’s performance of MacBeth?  Is it a matter of class distinction that makes one a crime -- or at least a moral offense -- and the other not?

And note the argument against animated CSAM applies only to visual depictions.  True crime books and videos discuss these offenses explicitly yet no one accuses their audiences of being CSA offenders as well.

Depicting drawn or animated CSAM or even mutual exploration by underaged characters is a felony in the US, even in the latter case where it’s difficult to argue what is depicted constitutes abuse (inappropriate, yes, but real-life toddlers play doctor and adolescents are known to fool around).

There are people in prison for drawing pictures of such activity, even when no actual children are depicted.

And as the Japanese have demonstrated with their hentai and ecchi anime and manga, all one needs is a line of dialog identifying all the participants as being of the age of consent to get away with such images even when the characters physically look much younger.

We need to recall Frederic Wertham’s spurious indictment of comic books Seduction Of The Innocent which ignited the anti-comics firestorm of the 1950s. or the President’s Commission On Obscenity And Pornography (started under Lyndon Johnson, finished under Dick Nixon) which attempted to criminalize all forms of pornography and erotic or adult expression only to discover that not only was there no correlation between porn and actual assaults but that anecdotal evidence indicated it might serve as a safety valve for some persons who might commit such crimes if they didn’t have a physically harmless outlet.

One can advocate smashing baby chicks with a hammer and not be guilty of any crime, one may depict in art a character smashing baby chicks with a hammer (as National Lampoon once did on a cover) and not be guilty of any crime, one can gleefully enjoy fictional depictions of baby chicks being smashed with hammers and not be guilty of any crime, but the moment one actually smashes a baby chick with a hammer one is guilty of cruelty to animals and faces criminal charges.

But Seduction Of The Innocent and the President’s Commission On Obscenity And Pornography point to the real reason Prager draws this distinction and it has nothing to do with children or sex.

Over the years Prager promoted and promulgated far right rhetoric that led audiences to support policies ruinous to this nation, policies that at the very least attempted to deprive actual living human beings of their civil rights, policies which attack the very basis of our system of laws and governance.

He doesn’t want to be held accountable.

If he can draw a line between saying something and actually doing it, he can absolve himself of all guilt and responsibility for the havoc those policies wreaked.

“Hey, I only asked a question, I didn’t tell people to go out and do it.”

Sound familiar?

Finally in closing, to reiterate the obvious for the cheap seats on the Internet:

• I absolutely believe and agree that anyone deliberately harming a child for personal pleasure should be punished in full accordance with the law.

• I absolutely believe and agree that anyone circulating actual images of actual children being harmed in such a manner should be punished in full accordance with the law.

• While I find fictional depictions of such harm deplorable, I do not think they should be considered the equivalent of actual depictions.

• While I find attraction to children to be deplorable, as long as the person harboring such an attraction does not act on it, I pass no judgment.

© Buzz Dixon