Liberty is conceived of today as ultimate freedom. For many, this means freedom from government. But when the wealthy exploit the poor, it is only the government that can step in to institute regulations to mitigate corrupt business practices. What this modern sense of liberty really means is the liberty to be controlled, whether it be by debt or pornography. E. Michael Jones explains how pornography is used as a tool to keep the public from being fixated on their crippling debt:
The ultimate result of the moral deregulation which took place beginning in the 1970s was massive student loan debt and massive addiction to pornography, which the Cato Institute justified to distract newly enslaved college graduates from the fact that they will never pay off their debts.[1]
This is the form of liberty that has become synonymous with America. Dante Alighieri noted the similarity between usury and sodomy:
Dante, in pity, restores the torn leaves to the soul of his countryman and the Poets move on to the next round, a great PLAIN OF BURNING SAND upon which there descends an eternal slow RAIN OF FIRE. Here, scorched by fire from above and below, are three classes of sinners suffering differing degrees of exposure to the fire. The BLASPHEMERS (The Violent against God) are stretched supine upon the sand, the SODOMITES (The Violent against Nature) run in endless circles, and the USURERS (The Violent against Art, which is the Grandchild of God) huddle on the sands.[2]
Dante included blasphemers, sodomites, and usurers in the same circle of hell because of their unnaturalness. Sex is supposed to result in procreation, but sodomy makes it sterile. “Money is sterile,” Aristotle said, and is supposed to be used as a form of legal tender representing the result of labor, but usury makes sterile money multiply. Blasphemy prohibits the fruits of grace and salvation. Those in this section of hell would be punished by the fires of Sodom and Gomorrah. As John Ciardi wrote, “Blasphemy, sodomy, and usury are all unnatural and sterile actions: thus the unbearing desert is the eternity of these sinners; and thus the rain, which in nature should be fertile and cool, descends as fire.”[3]