Steve Hochstadt: Free Speech about Saggy Pants
[Steve Hochstadt of Jacksonville is a professor of history at Illinois College. His column appears every Tuesday in the Journal-Courier and is available and on his blog at stevehochstadt.blogspot.com.]
Here’s what I think of saggy pants: They look like hell....
Some outraged Americans want to ban saggy pants in public. If a community can fine homeowners for not keeping their houses painted properly, then why can’t it make people keep their pants up? The power to legislate dress code is already used across America to ban public nudity, so it’s not a big step to ban the display of undershorts....
Here’s my attempt at reasonable discussion. The call for a saggy pants ban comes mainly, but not entirely, from conservatives. They want local governments to expand their coercive powers into dangerous territory. How do you make saggy pants illegal without creating pages of specifications about what kind of shorts may be seen in public? What social good would come of harassing young, often poor men, who most likely are not at that moment on the job? And why do conservatives want to expand government to enforce their priorities, and then criticize liberals’ efforts to make government do more for our citizens?...
Read entire article at Jacksonville Journal-Courier
Here’s what I think of saggy pants: They look like hell....
Some outraged Americans want to ban saggy pants in public. If a community can fine homeowners for not keeping their houses painted properly, then why can’t it make people keep their pants up? The power to legislate dress code is already used across America to ban public nudity, so it’s not a big step to ban the display of undershorts....
Here’s my attempt at reasonable discussion. The call for a saggy pants ban comes mainly, but not entirely, from conservatives. They want local governments to expand their coercive powers into dangerous territory. How do you make saggy pants illegal without creating pages of specifications about what kind of shorts may be seen in public? What social good would come of harassing young, often poor men, who most likely are not at that moment on the job? And why do conservatives want to expand government to enforce their priorities, and then criticize liberals’ efforts to make government do more for our citizens?...