Who will censor the censors? That is a question asked increasingly by librarians and other defenders of pornography in the United States. At the University of Wisconsin, at least, we know the answer: it is the Board of Regents, who recently ordered the Union Council (a predominantly student or ganization) at the Madison campus to return Playboy, Playgirl, and Pent house to the magazine racks of the student unions. The sponsor of the resolution made use of the old slippery slope argument: today it’s Playboy, tomorrow it will be The Nation (not a bad idea, really), “and after that the National Review.” In a ringing defense of academic freedom, he de clared, “We can’t stand idly by while a small segment of the community makes a judgment on what is porno graphic.” The counterargument was predictably feminist. One female re gent suggested that “men’s magazines” put women in “non-positive situations.” Apparently, Penthouse would be an appropriate journal to hawk and vend in state-supported schools for Wisconsin adolescents, if only it put women into positive situations. (They get to wear the leather?) You have to wonder how these people ever graduat ed from college, much less became regents.

Meanwhile, Playboy is mightily afraid of a conservative backlash, so much so that it has written William Buckley to ask his support. Mr. Buckley, by his own account, has written frequently for Playboy and is one of the many celebrities that has been the subject of a Playboy inter view. Of course, the interview is the most important part of the magazine—we don’t know anyone who has looked at the rest of it. What was the editor of National Review doing in any part of a girlie magazine? His explana tion is that as a journalist, he has an obligation to seek out audiences. We wonder if the argument extends to the publications of the KKK and the American Nazi Party. But we can trust the editor of National Review to know what he is doing.

The same might be said of the editors of the new New Republic, who recently discovered that rock music is full of pornographic lyrics. What is more, the degeneracy in popular music “has to be viewed in the larger context of American pop culture.” Does this mean we should censor the airwaves? Of course not. You see, Cole Porter was naughty and Jimmie Rodg ers was suggestive. Prince may be more explicit, but his lyrics are only symbolic of a collapse in our “sexual standards and community values.” This sudden concern with community values is welcome, but why must it stop short of action? Urban culture in the U.S. is degenerate, but some mea sure of restraint is still exercised in the rest of the country. Children, being the little animals they are, will always respond to the most brutish appeals within a culture. The obvious solution is for adults to determine what is good for them and forbid what is not. That is at least part of what it means to be a grown-up. And if there are adults in our society who refuse to grow up, well, then it is up to the rest of us—even if we were a minority—to enforce our views, supposing we are strong enough. In any event, we have to make the effort. Otherwise, we shall end up disgruntled liberals, old men who “sit and hear each other groan” about their impotence.