Interesting article. And it's good to see that with all the partisan stuff going on, that these justices were pretty much on the same page together in totally picking this guy apart. Right from the gate even. He really was not well prepared at all.
From everything I've learned about this debate, it doesn't really seem that there is a debate at all. Or at least the facts don't support a debate. Basically it's like Baggins said. Violence in video games does not seem to create violence in real life. Of course correlation does not equal causation, so you can't say with certainty that it doesn't (which is the same reason why surgeon general warnings on cigarettes say it may cause cancer. We all know they do, but it can't be conclusively proven because an actual experiment would be unethical) but the correlation doesn't even seem to be there either when it comes to the violence. The main issue, I think, becomes the dehumanizing factor. Video games can desensitize to violence, and certainly some games do dehumanize the enemy. Or dehumanize in general, which is why I think Grand Theft Auto leaves such a bad taste in some people's mouths. But when you're dealing with that issue, it becomes more on the parent to have personal responsibility. Censorship isn't the answer. The parent can tell the kid that they don't want them playing that game, that's the parent's right, but it's not the governments job to to censor games so that the parents can just shrug off that responsibility. Because maybe, just maybe, some violent behavior is a cry for attention and if the parent actually, you know, was a parent to their child there wouldn't be the need for attention.
And there's the thing, which is that when you're dealing with ultra violent games and saying it corrupts children, you're missing the bigger picture, which is the parenting. A parent who lets their young child play explicit, violent games, is most likely an extremely permissive parent. And an overly permissive parenting style leads to children who are much more likely to act out, experiment with drugs, have sex at an earlier age, and so on. It's the parenting style, not the games the kid plays, or the music the kid listens to, or the movies the kid watches. Those are all symptomatic of the parenting style. It would be like saying the kid is violent or misbehaving because he eats pizza rolls and cake for dinner every night. Maybe the kid acts out and eats pizza rolls and cake every night because the parent just isn't around and doesn't set boundaries. Kids need structure and boundaries. If they don't get it, they will seek them out by misbehaving. If they still don't get it, the behaviors escalate and it becomes their pattern of behavior.
So the government censoring games and such just doesn't make sense to me and I actually find it offensive. Not just because it's censorship and removes personal accountability, but also because trying to censor something will usually lead to people wanting it even more. And that actually lowers the standards of creativity in society. Something automatically becomes popular simply because people are trying to ban it. The perfect example would be the far Christian right's attempt to stop the DaVinci Code. If they had just sat down and shut up, the book never would have been so popular. The Holy Blood Holy Grail idea is so full of holes that them trying to go against it actually made the theory gain more legitimacy. So the whole crusade to stop Dan Brown had the following affect: It perpetuated a faulty and historically inaccurate theory, it fed into the idea of a conspiracy theory that the church doesn't want you to know about, it made all Christians look like idiots, and it increased the popularity of a fairly mediocre book.
Oh, and just a side note, Baggins, you had wondered about other things that people said was causing violence and problems before video games, there's any number of things. Movies, of course, which led to a code of conduct in the 20's. Also music has always been a big one. Jazz was seen as destroying society back in the day (though that was also couched in racism). People find something to fear based on the newest technology. You even see it with severe mental illness. Someone with schizophrenia may fear that someone is watching them through the internet. Before that it was more likely to be the tv. Before televion, someone was listening through the radio. Before radio, it was the telegraph beaming orders into their brain. People already have the problem. The scapegoat changes, the problem does not. A hundred years from now (hopefully less) this same argument will be going on involving holographic people. "You're having sex or "killing" holograms that look like people! SOCIETY WILL BURN! THINK OF THE CHILDREN!"
