Democrats Attack Evil Video Games

Democrats Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Hillary Clinton of New York, and Dick Durbin of Illinois persuaded a Senate committee to approve a sweeping study of the "impact of electronic media use" to be organized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC.



Even though the legislation--called the Children and Media Research Advancement Act--does not include restrictions, it appears to be intended as a way to justify them. That's because a string of court decisions have been striking down antigaming laws because of a lack of hard evidence that minors are harmed by violence in video games.

So, since we don't have any evidence that the games are harmful, let's use taxpayer money to create a study that says it is harmful. You can always tell what results a study, survey, or poll will have by who finances it. Follow the money.

If you are doing a research project and it is financed by a specific group, and you know that group believes or desires the study to lean that way, then your research will have to help them prove their point or you risk losing further financing from them. After all, they are not going to continue to finance something that goes against their own agenda.

If the CDC eventually produces a study claiming a link between violent video games and harm to minors, the future of state and federal laws targeting such games could be radically different. So far, those laws have been ruled unconstitutional because judges have not found that kind of link to exist.

"Down the road when--if there is some sort of finding that there is harm in this--then we're going to see calls to regulate speech because of the potential harm," said Marv Johnson, legislative counsel to the American Civil Liberties Union. "That's where there's going to be a problem."

Exactly. Bush and the republicans are not the only ones who want to curb free speech. Governments like control, they like to suppress the rights of citizens. It's in your history books. American government is not unique. Throughout history, governments have known that allowing citizens freedom of speech and the right to bear arms is dangerous to them. Any opportunity to curb these two things will assure there will not be a revolution.

Lieberman's bill, called CAMRA, would provide funding to investigate the cognitive, physical, and sociobehavioral impact of electronic media on child and adolescent development--everything from physical coordination, diet, and sleeping habits to attention span, peer relationships, and aggression levels. Television, motion pictures, DVDs, interactive video games, the Internet, and cell phones would all be fair game.

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by Chris McElroy
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