…it’s just that the government would like them to feel otherwise.

An argument greatly relied upon by pro-censorship bloggers is that parents are overwhelmed by the pervasiveness of online pornography and the difficult task of ensuring their children aren’t exposed to illicit content.

I’m sure that those same censorship advocates are aware of existing PC based filtering applications that give parents the ability to monitor their children’s Internet access, even when the parents aren’t around (gasp).

I’m sure these same censorship advocates are aware of the numerous anti-malware systems available, often for free, that can combat the pornographic pop-ups that are raised as examples of the unrelenting pornographic assault on our children.

I’m sure these same censorship advocates are aware that the family, and indeed parenting, is supposedly held up as a shining value of our way of life and that parents are at all times concerned with the well-being of their children above all else.

I’m sure these same censorship advocates are capable of understanding the importance of the Internet’s structural integrity in promoting Australia’s tech credentials and therefore establishing more jobs and lifting financial pressure off families; filtering has already and will continue to lower business confidence in the Australian tech industry.

Apart from being rude and entirely patronising, the assertion that parents are desperate for the government to intervene by way of full ISP filtering is an apt example of a philosophical basis of conservatism. Conservatives, or at least the ones that haven’t tried to PR their way out of it, base social policy on the idea that people won’t make the right decisions unless the government/monarchy/aristocracy makes it for them.

Conservatism is an institutionalised lack of faith in the general population.