David Allen Green: Should we ban 'banning' things?

We all want to ban something. It is a staple of our political culture. All of us are perhaps one moment away from seeking to ban what someone else is saying or doing. The nod-a-long responses of "it shouldn't be allowed" or "there should be a law against it" are the common solutions to many perceived problems.
However, to "ban" something is not actually to eliminate it, whatever "it" is. The "it" is not extinguished; the "it" may just be attended by some different consequences. The legalistic prose in a solemn document is not some magic spell which banishes horrors by invocation. To say there should be a law against a thing is often no more than saying there should be a spell against it...

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