Virginia’s cultural liberals and conservatives are locking horns again, this time in Loudoun County. The issue: R-rated movies in public libraries. The Board of Supervisors has a problem with spending public money to stock the library with R-rated titles, according to an article in the Washington Post. Civil libertarians are accusing the supervisors of something akin to censorship: violating the public’s right to read (or listen, or view).
To my mind, this is the wrong debate. I don’t think the Loudoun public library system should be spending any of its $10.5 million budget on videos of any kind, whether it’s “Bambi” or “Braveheart”.
Are there not enough video stores in Loudoun County? Does the cable service, with its movie channels and and Pay Per View, offer an insufficient choice of movies? Has Amazon.com ceased delivering DVDs to Leesburg?
Frivolous controversies like this one are the inevitable result of government getting involved in something it has no business in. By its intrinsic nature, government in a democratic society politicizes everything it touches.