P*rn Addiction at Crisis Level

Over 50% of American men are addicted to pornography. This is a crisis, since the effects of porn damage everyone around the addict, including the addict himself, who loses his memory and ability to concentrate. Women, if your man seems distant, it is probably not because he is "mysterious," but because he has a secret addiction to porn.

Read the abridged article at WND (formerly WorldNetDaily) 

The full, unedited version is below.

More than 50% of men now look at pornography regularly, thanks to easy access and constant bombardment of images on the internet. No one wants to talk about it. Society generally looks the other way at pornography, dismissing it as harmless “men's entertainment.” The reality is that it is extremely addictive, and along with the addiction comes life-destroying side effects. It puts the addict into a creepy bondage that affects the lives of those around him or her. It is not a victimless crime. It has become a chilling epidemic that is ruining the minds, families and jobs of possibly half the men in the country. Everyone has a family member, spouse or friend whose life is full of problems due to this addiction.

Viewing pornography overstimulates a neurochemical in the body called dopamime. In men, it mixes with testosterone and builds up an adrenaline rush. After repeatedly looking at porn, a tolerance is built up, and it becomes difficult for ordinary romantic experiences to provide pleasure. Men lose interest in real romance. Musician John Mayer has publicly admitted that his pornography habit is so strong he prefers to stay home with it instead of spending time with a real woman. Some men end up forcing the pornographic acts they watch on their unwilling wives in order to try and become interested in them again. The rise in men's erectile-dysfunction aids is no doubt due in part to the increase in pornographic addictions.

The kind of addiction created by porn is akin to drug users needing stronger and stronger drugs in order to achieve the same feeling. Addicts seek out increasingly hardcore porn to try and satisfy their addictions. Ironically, they don't seek out more hardcore porn in order to obtain more pleasure, but because they are obtaining less pleasure. Several studies have come out revealing that pornography addicts have the same brain changes as drug addicts. It radically alters the structure of the brain, as the pleasure parts of the brain become more dominant, literally turning into a “one-track mind.” The structural brain changes have been compared to brain damage. Addiction to pornography destroys intelligence, ruining the ability to concentrate and causing forgetfulness. It reduced one engineer's ability to hold down any job except at minimum wage level.

The American Society of Addiction modified its definition of addiction to include pornography last year, stating that it can be associated with the "pathological pursuit of rewards." Pornography is an extremely difficult addiction to cure, because recovery involves withdrawal symptoms like irritability, concentration problems, and even flu-like symptoms. It takes 6-12 weeks after stopping to be able to enjoy normal romance fully again.

The internet has allowed for the creation and sharing of an endless stream of pornography, making it easier to get trapped. Men cannot surf the web or log into their email accounts without seeing ads and emails with air-brushed provocative women inviting them to click. 25% of internet searches are related to pornography. They're not all men, either, one-third of all who look at porn on the internet are women. 20,000 pornographic videos are produced each year in the San Fernando Valley, 90% of all pornographic videos.

The most disturbing part about pornography addiction is that it can lead to child pornography. When an addict cannot get the same feeling any longer from regular pornography, the addict may turn to child pornography. Child pornography is increasing; between 2005 and 2009 there was a 432% increase in child pornography movies and images.

Another terrible consequence of porn is it can lead to rape. Clinical psychologist Dr. Victor Cline, author of Pornography's Effects on Adults & Children, found that almost half of the rapists he studied used pornography to arouse themselves before they sought out a victim to rape. Dr. M.J. Goldstein studied sex offenders and found that many of them acted out the sex acts they watched in pornography on their victims. Most admitted that watching pornography increased their desire for deviant activities. Serial rapist and killer Ted Bundy has said that his pornography addiction progressed through stages.

Porn creates images of women that are not based in reality. Most porn stars are deeply troubled, and a high proportion are sexual abuse survivors. Many ex-porn stars are now speaking out about how how terrible the industry really is. It is not glamorous, the average male porn star makes $40,000 annually. There are 15 new cases of STDs reported in the adult movie business every week. One porn star has said that 99.9% of the industry has herpes. Another porn star said the industry only tests for HIV, not other STDs. Another one said they are all on drugs, that is “an empty lifestyle trying to fill up a void.”

Shelley Luben, a former porn actress, now speaks out against porn. She exposes the truth the porn industry hides, “The porn industry wants YOU to think we porn actresses love sex. They want you to think we enjoy being degraded by all kinds of repulsive acts.” The pornography industry renamed itself to the “adult entertainment industry” in order to create the perception that it's just entertainment. It's not, it is extremely damaging to the wives and children of the man “being entertained.” Culture theorist and author Jackson Katz describes how porn hurts regular relationships, “It normalizes the men's pleasure-taking as it sexualizes the woman's degradation.”

The epidemic has seeped into the workplace, hurting workplace productivity. A Nielsen report found that 29% of working adults access adult websites form work computers. Considering that viewing porn is a fireable offense, this is evidence of how severely addictive porn is.

Men who are addicted to pornography frequently defend their addiction by claiming they have “needs.” However, pornography has not been around or easily accessible until recently. Cavemen got by just fine without it.

Communities used to be able to zone adult stores away from sight. With the advent of the internet, any attempt now to regulate pornography raises cries of censorship. Yet the Supreme Court's rulings over the past 60 years holding that pornography is protected free speech drew arbitrary lines: obscenity – which includes extremely hardcore pornography - can still be banned.

Dr. Patrick Carnes, who researches sexual addictions, has found that most sexual addicts come from dysfunctional families, with the root of their addictions based in childhood. Instead of dismissing this unhealthy addiction as “free speech,” society should help pornography addicts understand that their behavior is not normal, and they need to take steps to correct it, such as joining a 12-step support group or using self-help at websites like yourbrainonporn.com. Addicts are not using pornography for “entertainment,” but to mask their emotional problems. Porn does not liberate men, but puts them in virtual bondage. Their unhappiness is still there, their relationship problems are still there, and they risk damaging their lives further as the addiction increases. Sadly, most pornography addicts are probably unaware they have an addiction, thanks to society telling them that it is just “men's entertainment.”

There needs to be a shift in cultural attitudes regarding pornography. Ironically, it is women who are responsible for instituting this laissez-faire attitude towards porn. Feminists in the 1960's ushered in a sexual revolution, which said that anything goes, free love, free sex. This was self-defeating to feminists, since porn eroticizes male supremacy. Sexologist Alfred Kinsey also contributed to society normalizing porn. He performed research on subjects that included a high percentage of pedophiles, inmates, sex offenders, pimps and prostitutes, but told everyone his subjects were “average” Americans. He claimed his results proved that men need deviant sexual behavior and that it is normal. His findings were widely adopted in schools and universities and by psychologists, even though it became well-known later that he was a deviant himself who welcomed the sexualization of children.

Former porn actress Luben tells men they must stop, “The truth is there IS NO fantasy in porn. It’s all a lie.” She asks men, “We want you to throw out our movies and help piece together the shattered fragments of our lives.”

Christians can speak up against pornography from a moral basis. The Bible calls it a sin. In Matthew 5:28, Jesus said that looking at a woman lustfully is the same as the sin of adultery. 2^nd Peter 2:14 speaks to the addiction aspect, “They commit adultery with their eyes, and their desire for sin is never satisfied.” Christian leader James Dobson produced a report for the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography under President Reagan, where he explained how pornography has gone from airbrushed naked models to serious perversion, due to addicts needing more stimulation. “This is the world of pornography today, and I believe the public would rise up in wrath to condemn it if they knew of its prominence.” It is over 25 years later and pornography is more prevalent and disgusting than ever. Why hasn't the public risen up against it? Because half of the men in our society are addicted themselves.

Car Free Day Foreshadows Vehicular Tyranny

Often in their attempt to engineer our lives whether we want them to or not, contemporary liberals have a tendency to hand down any number of psychosocial laws or principles since most of them view us as little more than animals to herd into a corral. It seems that their behavior is often just as predictable.

For example, one of the cardinal principles to understanding contemporary liberalism is that the policies that they initially enact as voluntary will ultimately be enforced as mandatory..

Gaining in popularity in large cities and metropolitan areas across the United States is an occasion called “Car-Free Day.” It is pretty much as it sounds. For no other reason than that they have duped most into believing that they are better than everybody else, social planners have told us that we are suppose to voluntarily forego the use of our personal automobiles for a day in favor of public transportation and bio-locomotion (forms of transit such as walking where we want to go or riding a bike).

Eventually, this will go from occasional and voluntary to mandatory and permanent. Some will denounce such a conjecture as typical conservative and conspiracy fearmongering.

But is it? It seems more like rational analysis of the mass media.

In a Washington Examiner column titled "Car-Free In DC In Your Future", Harry Jaffe makes this very proposal. Specifically he contends, "Why not make Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House to the foot of the U.S. Capitol car-free on Sundays? Imagine the inaugural route, America’s Main Street, a peaceful parade of strollers, bikers, and walkers.”

Another law of human nature is that what is called for (especially when the demand involves extending control over the lives of other human beings) is never enough.

Those opposed to the automobile won’t be satisfied with Pennsylvania avenue closed on Sundays. Eventually the call for it to be closed everyday will go out and ultimately this policy will engulf larger and larger portions of the city.

Such a policy could very well come to engulf much of the population of the United States. Impossible, the skeptical scoff. But once again, is it?

Already in the most blighted portions of Detroit and in Katrina-devastated New Orleans, a protracted campaign of systematic low grade depopulation has been underway for sometime. For instead of sending in SWAT teams to interdict and remove criminally recalcitrant segments of the population, municipal authorities need only deny those utilities necessary to enjoy a technologically advanced standard of existence.

The argument is made that too many resources would be expended to maintain or repair such infrastructure. Residents would be relocated to areas of higher population density where police and bureaucratic operatives do not have to exert themselves to as a great of an extent (we wouldn’t want to interrupt those coffee breaks and doughnut runs). The abandoned properties would be reforested or whatever the lovely sounding word of the month happens to be for infringement of property rights in the name of the environment.

Yet another law regarding how liberals tend to behave manifests itself in regards to the car free issue. That is none other than that liberals tend not to abide by the rules imposed upon and the deprivations expected of the rest of us.

For example, one enthusiastic supporter of Car Free Day so much so that he extended the festivity to an entire week is Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick. In 2011 on the very first day of the commemoration, however, he was caught riding in an automobile wherever it was he needed to go.

Those that have surrendered their free thought in return for what Mark Levin refers to as the proverbial government cheese will respond, “But a governor is so much more important and must get wherever it is that he needs to go in a safe and timely manner.”

But in terms of your own life and in the lives of your family members, aren’t you just as important and in many ways even more so than the assorted governmental figureheads and functionaries?

For example, if you are fired for getting to work late or too far geographically from the places of gainful employment, is this governor going to put food on your table? If you are unable to get to your progeny quickly after school, will the youngsters be given a police escort home to ensure they are not victimized by child predators?

Celebrations are about much more than having a good time. Such commemorations also convey the values those holding them want to build civilization and morality around.

For example, Mother’s and Father’s Day uplift the importance of children honoring their parents as well as parents providing the kind of nurturing care deserving of such respect. Christmas and Easter remind that there is a God who so loved the world that He gave us His only begotten Son. And in its own dark way, Halloween reminds that we only get to enjoy the life in this world for a brief while so we had better get thinking about what lies beyond.

Throughout much of the modern and now into the postmodern era, the value of the individual has been increasingly downplayed. It is only to be expected that the celebrations commemorating what these epochs herald as the ideal would reflect as such.

By discerning this, the astute patriot is better able to comprehend and counter these exact threats to our liberty.

by Frederick Meekins

Students Punished For Knowing More Than Teachers

A number of high school students were suspended for ingesting energy mints on the grounds of their Perkin, Illinois high school.

The thing of it is, the confection is perfectly legal as it consists primarily of caffeine.

Thus, they are technically no worse than popular energy drinks. But despite learning this, school administrators intend to let the suspensions stand.

The Superintendent insists the suspensions are justified because the students "displayed gross misconduct for taking an unknown product."

The students could have full well know what they were taking.

This is all bureaucratic smokescreen and euphemism that the students are being punished for knowing more than the teachers and for exercising their own judgment apart from certified state authority.

Eventually, this kind of reasoning will be applied to anyone that ingests anything other than the school-provided lunches.

After all, how can teachers be absolutely certain those brownies brought from home don't contain a little flavor enhancing "greenery"?

by Frederick Meekins

Random Observations As We Race to the End of the Mayan Calendar

by John Harris

“You Didn’t Write That”

A few weeks ago, President Obama committed the infamous gaffe (allowed to leak through the media because The Fourth Estate could not itself discern any problem with his sentiments) of announcing that none of us has ever accomplished anything on his own. I noted at the time in my weekly ramble that Mr. Obama had neither written his own speech nor “evolved” his own ideas on the subject, because I had heard the same spiel four decades ago as an undergraduate. In my Economics class, however, the lines of dependency clearly led to other workers, not to a huge state bureaucracy; and while the work force is indeed public-sector in a socialist republic, Obama’s engineers had originally intended the facilitators in the allusion to be guys with wrenches and shovels, not desk jockeys.

I serendipitously ran across the following passage this week in a short story, “El Hijo del Camino”, composed by Jacinto Octavio Picón for his collection, Cuentos de mi Tiempo. The central character has labored at dozens of blue-collar jobs for years when, in the course of doing some drudgery or other, he blunders into a lavishly decorated room. He grows yet more dazzled when the most beautiful woman he has ever seen parades through the glittering space on her way to a regal entertainment, dressed to the hilt. These are his thoughts (in my translation):

The young man, ignorant and uneducated, incapable of analyzing what he was experiencing—yet a man, when all was said and done—felt the temptation and the anxiety that a ripe fruit produces when placed before a child’s mouth.

At first he remained suspended in a spasm of surprise, then he murmured to himself with the speed of thought that everything contained in this wondrous precinct and everything embodied in the beauty of this extraordinary woman had been passed during its birth, in one way or another, through his own hands. Coal wrenched from the bowels of the earth and converted into torrents of light… crystal molded in the furnaces that had seared his throat… iron forged in the fires where he had scorched his fingers… silks synthesized from substances that had poisoned his lungs… everything—he had contributed to all of it! And none of it—nothing—was for him!

It was then that Lucy appeared to his desire as a marvelous creation in which he had put the bone of his bone and blood of his blood until he had produced a fusion of all human riches. Why did she not belong to him by right? Were they bound to live eternally close together and separated at the same time, like a courtesan and her slave? What cruel law was handling him thus? Who was its author?

Of course, the encounter doesn’t turn out well for our protagonist. Chased out of the mansion for pawing over this child of privilege, he returns with a bomb, is caught, and ends up on the scaffold. And by proxy, he could be said to have built the scaffold, too! All the work and none of the reward… do you get it now?

Cuentos was published in 1895. That’s EIGHTEEN-ninety five. Progressivism, as we readily see in studying its life cycle, progresses at the speed of a molasses glacier.

Thirty Percent or Forty-Seven?

In a piece that I wrote a couple of weeks ago, I speculated that probably one American in three is an immovable Obama supporter. I had no hard stats upon which to base my claim—only personal experience. Two members of my immediate family will vote for an extended Obama reign, beyond the shadow of a doubt; or the second will, at any rate, if he can only bring himself to get out of bed and venture into the land of live people for a few minutes. The first, whose support is granite-hard, is actually voting for a self-serving construct in which Obama’s silhouette occupies a keystone position. If he did not exist, she would have to create him—and he indeed does not exist as she imagines him, and so she has indeed created his legend, his eidon: the Platonic idea of The Enlightened One. That the egotistical pustule which encases her civic-consciousness is eminently vulnerable to the lancet of clear thinking explains why no one can engage her in a political conversation (no one, that is, except other emotional cripples in her tiny pool of public service employees, among whom she is certain to find only confirmation). A sudden access of sane understanding would force her to overhaul her entire existence.

Such people are the truly invincible foe, from Mr. Romney’s perspective. He misidentified them in drawing his calculations from “objective statistics” that reflect the number of Americans on the dole. His faux pas, to the extent that he made one, was therefore to assume that a single mother of three who depends upon taxpayer handouts for survival is fully comfortable with that arrangement. I and many others believe that he was mistaken in this assumption. Again, I just have a hunch: but I strongly suspect that a black unwed mother with no high school diploma is far more likely to leap at the chance of altering her situation than a white college-educated spinster professional who simply cannot survive psychically if she doesn’t believe herself smarter and better than everyone else on the block.

Sometimes Romney is too much of a businessman. He needs to pull his head out of his figures occasionally and ponder the dark mysteries of human nature. It really isn’t the economy, Mitt—not at rock-bottom. It’s the values.

Collateral Damage in Operation “Nuke First Amendment”

What do slain border agent Brian Terry and slain ambassador Christopher Stevens have in common, besides being dedicated and courageous public servants? Little to nothing, let us hope.

But the question is increasingly being asked, by Sean Hannity and others, “Why was Ambassador Stevens unguarded on the eve of his death? Why is it that even the Navy Seals murdered at his side had not actually been designated to protect him?” At best, we may assume that calculations liberally seasoned with criminal naiveté and incompetent stupidity were at fault—something about as well proportioned to reality as Gabby Giffords’ open-air event without security in one of the nation’s most dangerous cities: some lunacy in that proportion, but raised by the power of ten or twelve.

Agent Terry himself could be said to have fallen victim to the same gross incompetence. There was certainly nothing personal in his being “set up to die” by the minions of Attorney General Holder. Yet someone was indeed supposed to die. Several someones, or several hundred nobodies—ordinary Mexican and U.S. citizens who would become nameless statistics, and whose sheer number would cause a public outcry against the easy availability of legal firearms. The result was to be an abrogation of the Second Amendment. Those of us who no longer believe in the Easter Bunny and Obama’s Stash know that perfectly well. Holder needed bodies, and Terry was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

So what about Stevens? Things haven’t been going particularly well for Campaign Obama, whatever you hear from Scott Pelley and Wolf Blitzer. Currently, the uproar from the few credible journalists that remain in our crumbling culture concerns why the Administration failed to respond to numerous warnings about imminent trouble on the 9/11 anniversary. But what if the trouble had been fully, accurately anticipated and the response planned long in advance? What if the response we saw was the one planned?

Administration spokes-zombies have certainly been reiterating the “Islamaphobe Christian fundamentalist hate-speech video” as the culprit just as if they were repeating the rehearsed line of a play in which a fellow actor had forgotten his part. Maybe he would remember his words if they kept mouthing theirs. What if the forgotten line was supposed to run something like, “Romney… Romney did it. Romney’s people… they do things like this, all the time!”

What if American embassies in Arab countries had to go up in smoke so that American voters could see how dangerous the First Amendment is with so many crazed, venom-spitting Christians on the loose? What if the embassies and their personnel had to be left unguarded so as to create the maximum detonation to draw the maximum of attention from the American electorate?

In that case, Christopher Stevens was collateral damage, just like Brian Terry. The engineers of occasions like these, recall, are ideological descendents of that luminary who famously informed posterity that you need to break some eggs to make an omelet.

May both of these young men find eternal peace in the embrace of a loving God.

Can We Please Stop Paying Them to Kill Us?

While I’m on the subject of the Middle East… Rand Paul has desperately been trying to terminate our billion-and-a-half bucks of aid to Egypt, opposed first by senate Democrats but lately, and more stubbornly, by his own party. Why should we pay them to kill us? Why should we pay any of them? Why are we giving guns, instruction, and money to people in Iraq, Pakistan, and now Egypt and Libya who will end up using our munificence to murder our sons and daughters? We romped through this suicidal dance with the Zetas in Mexico, assuming that they were an elite force loyal to their government rather than a bunch of unmoored young men with no conscience and empty pockets. For that matter, we did the same thing with Mao’s Communist rebels throughout World War Two—arming them to the teeth, that is (and pouring goods and money into Stalin’s lap), over Chiang Kai-shek’s frail cries for prudence and restraint. How many Americans did we lose in Korea and Vietnam? How many tens of millions of innocent bystanders were destroyed as they tried to till their native soil?

Two counter-arguments always float to the surface like the wormy debris of a sunken ship. One is that our enemies will descend into whatever vacuum of influence is left by our withdrawal. Bob Beckel always invokes the Chinese for this villainous role (in patent contradiction of his side’s railing against xenophobia and in support, apparently, of colonialism). Would the Chinese really like to have Central Asia and North Africa? I say we put a shiny red bow on both of them. These “nations” need to hammer out their own millennial problems until they tire of braining each other and of inviting foreign adventurism through their gross ineptitude. I feel for their women and children… but you don’t make an abused wife’s life easier by smacking her husband for beating her. You’ll probably get her killed. As for the oil that, I presume, represents the football not to be fumbled to China under any circumstances… maybe we should just concentrate on keeping China out of oil fields in the Western Hemisphere, and go full-speed-ahead with fracking.

Of course, Objection Two is Israel. If we pull out of the Arab world and leave it to grow up or self-destruct, what will become of our Israeli allies? This is a very strange protest to be hearing in 2012, when the winner of a recent Nobel Peace Prize is smoking Muslim bad guys from the stratosphere like Bill Cody picking off buffalo. Why do we need boots on the ground when we have drones in the air? The one piece of real estate that truly needs pedestrian patrolling for our national security is our southern border. Israel has enough nukes to stare down all of her rude neighbors at once, Arab Muslims have never been so united against Jews that they can long abstain from killing each other, and our own high-tech defense systems can be operated from a concrete bunker in Kentucky as long as we don’t sell all of our secrets to the Chinese and defund all of our programs to buy El Supremo a life-membership in the Oval Office.

We need to bring our troops and citizens home, withdraw from the U.N., form a new series of alliances based on our interests and our values, and then invite other nations into the game when and if they decide to behave like adults. We need to stop paying dysfunctional societies to kill our children.

Bring on the Polls—Make My Day

If I could ask Santa for one early Christmas present, it would be the continuation of these ridiculous polls that show Barack Obama enjoying an insuperable lead. The designers of these Willie Wonka phone-a-thons think that conservatives will grow demoralized and stay home on Election Day… but the result stands in polar opposition to the intent. Conservatives, instead, are pouring their hard-earned money into closely contested races, including Romney’s (which would otherwise be a very tough sell to them). They will also crawl to their polling places in November even if Black Panthers break both their legs. The other side, meanwhile, is already temperamentally disinclined to alight from its collective gluteus maximus for any sort of public commitment. They belong to the 47%, remember, who have grown accustomed to having life delivered to their doorstep. (I said “belong to”—I didn’t say that the 47% consists solely of their ilk.) The polls are giving them a comfortable, rational excuse just to stay home and play on Facebook.

PLEASE continue this, ladies and gentlemen of the Fourth Estate (and you, too, NBC employees). You’re making my day, and maybe saving our century.