FCC Regulation of Broadcast Media Content.

The problem I am facing with your arguments is that you are essentially taking a contradictory point of view. In my last argument I established two tiers that need to be established if we are to regulate media content; in other words, you can think of it as two "tests" the government needs to pass to justify regulation of broadcast media content. The first is whether free speech is something the government can regulate in the first place, and the second is, if so, does that justify the government restricting the use of indecency in one form of free speech, television. Implicitly, you've allowed the government to pass the first test; you don't seem to have an issue with the idea of regulation of freedom of speech, when necessary, in general. This means that, by definition, it definitely is justifiable for the government to restrict speech in such a way. The extent to which it regulates speech is one thing; but this is irrelevant to the issue of whether the government has that power in the first place, which we clearly have established it does. So, at this point, it becomes a question of whether it is desirable or not at the most fundamental level, and I would answer that it is desirable on two levels. The first is that in a good majority of cases, the right to regulate freedom of speech is a reason the government should do it. In my last argument I made an analogy between Schenck v. United States and the current debate; both are regulations on speech rights in order to protect the well-being of the populace. Of course, in detail they are much different, but the principle is much the same. I am not attempting to justify this based on Schenck, but only to say that this is clearly something that would not be unprecedented. Second, I would argue that it is actually a good thing to regulate indecency in this way. As I've mentioned, unfortunate as it may be, many parents simply do an inadequate job raising their children. I do not think the correct response is to say, "Oh, well, nothing we can do," and just accept this. That is the definition of libertarianism, and I don't think it's the correct response. If we can take action that would benefit society, I don't see why we oughtn't do so. To quote a cliche, "It takes a village to raise a child." Why can't that village be American society? If the government takes proactive action to help raise its children, the results can only be positive. Finally, you make the argument that society should not impose its standards of decency on individuals. However, you cannot think of "society" as an abstract construct - society is a group of individuals, and we come up with societal standards of decency based on what the majority believe. Naturally, any democracy is about letting minority points of view be expressed; but there are two reasons why this doesn't matter here. The first is that in such corporate-controlled media such as television, you won't see minority points of view anyway. What you see on TV is the product of corporations already determining what they think is fit for society, which is actually not always in our best interest. Allowing governmental regulation is one way of combating the ineffable power of the free market to put the interests of corporate wallets in front of societal interests. The second reason is that sometimes, we do need majority rule, in that sense of the word. We as a society have determined a collective set of standards that we mostly all agree on; there's no reason not to enforce these if they are beneficial standards.