Posted on 04/12/2006 10:58:22 AM PDT by tpaine
How the hell did we get into this mess?'"
The War on Drugs is nothing more than alcohol Prohibition dressed up for the 1990s.
It certainly can't stop people from making, selling, or using drugs, any more than the Volstead Act ever stopped them from making, selling, or using alcohol, but it has succeeded in boosting the price of drugs from mere pennies a pound to hundreds of dollars an ounce -- which anyone who knows anything about economics will immediately recognize enormously increases the incentive to enter the illegal drug market.
It's driven the weakest competition out of the market and created not just a livelihood where there wasn't one before, but a monopoly for the most violent and ruthless criminals in the world today -- and, not incidentally, for millions of bureaucrats, politicians, judges, lawyers, and cops, honest and otherwise. It's corrupted every American institution at every conceivable level.
Worst of all, it's given the bureaucrats and politicians another excuse -- an excuse that appears acceptable to the media and the public -- to raise taxes exponentially and stamp CANCELLED across the Bill of Rights, especially the Second Amendment.
Never mind that what you do to your body is your business or you haven't any rights at all.
Never mind that the one and only way to protect your children from drugs is simply the long, hard, grownup task of bringing them up right; let's start by abolishing public schools, which concentrate and distribute self-destructive behavior the way public hospitals concentrate and distribute disease.
Never mind that before the turn of the century, addictive drugs were freely available everywhere and nobody showed much interest in them.
Never mind that there wasn't any drug problem -- I repeat, there wasn't any drug problem -- until your fellow voters, the bureaucrats, and the politicians created a drug problem.
From the original classic Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine through Babylon 5, TekWar, Time Trax, and Wild Palms, to the late, unlamented Space Rangers, the message we get from most science fiction is the same: the historically and politically unique civilization that was born at Concord Bridge -- and specifically constituted to prevent travesties like alcohol Prohibition, business Prohibition, drug Prohibition, or weapon Prohibition -- is headed nowhere now but toward an increasingly oppressive police state that has already nullified everything the Founding Fathers, and the Bill of Rights they left us, once stood for.
Unless you do something to stop it. And wishing will not make it so.
There's more to the fight for a better future than simply wishing the badguys would go away. We hand them a bludgeon -- in the form of a contradiction -- every time we agree to any kind of Prohibition at all, and it's childish of us to expect them not to use it to bash our metaphorical -- and literal -- heads in.
Wishing can't accomplish anything. We'll keep losing our liberties, one by one, until we get our logical and ethical ducks in a row.
The only answer is to enforce the Bill of Rights.
Sure, there are parts of it that liberals don't care for. There are parts of it conservatives don't like. I'm a libertarian -- just like the Founding Fathers before me -- and every word of it is music to my ears.
But the Bill of Rights isn't a menu, it's the Ten Commandments of American political behavior and if you blow one -- even one you don't like -- you blow them all. Unlike a lot of Utopian proposals being bruited about Right, Left, and Center these days, enforcing the Bill of Rights doesn't require the passage of another amendment, another statute, another resolution, another ordinance, or another regulation. Enforcing the Bill of Rights doesn't require a policeman stationed on every street corner. Enforcing the Bill of Rights doesn't require a basic change in human nature. Enforcing the Bill of Rights doesn't require the Millenium to arrive. The Bill of Rights is what we've got already.
The Bill of Rights is what we all agreed on -- especially the bureaucrats and the politicians who took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution "against all enemies foreign and domestic".
The Bill of Rights is the law. Let us determine here and now, to put the civility back into civilization, through stringent enforcement of the Bill of Rights.
L. Neil Smith
If you're not too busy on a South Park thread, I'd expect to see you over here touting your legalization, drugs for everyone rants!
Q: What is a Libertarian?
A: A Republican who smokes pot.
Careful, you are about to be mobbed by a legion of failed war on some drug zealots who will give up anything to prevent one person from getting high.
"and stamp CANCELLED across the Bill of Rights, especially the Second Amendment"
Change that to the 4th and he gets it right. A "reasonable" search is now just about any search, as long as "drugs" are somehow involved.
Where's the joke in supporting our Bill of Rights?
Move to the Netherlands...better yet quit your griping.
"through stringent enforcement of the Bill of Rights."
Ja Herr comandante! Ve shall harshly enforce these rights! Or else!
What a loser Nazi/Commie Libertarian.
Like, it was just a joke man, relaxxxx, take another toke and don't take everything so seriously dude... it's all, groooooovvvvvyyyyyy....
Dang. What have you been smoking?
Yep, people get sick & die.
Most of us learn to live with that fact. Drug warriors see it as an opportunity to control society. -- Which is a form of sickness. So it goes.
One "extreme makeover" coming right up!
I call for support for our Constitution; you call me a nazi...
How weird.
Yeah... that was my original thought as well. Such cogent argumentation. Such command of the English language and logically structured arguments you presented to refute Mr. Smith's points.
Surely there is a Nodel Prize in your future...
See post #8 for a joke..
LOL - coming from you. Most people are not so stupid as to not recognize the differences. Congrats.
LOL, makes no sense. Anyway, you're supposed to call us loserdopians.
you're supposed to call us loserdopians.
Wow... Are you a Mensa member? How could anyone refute such stunning displays of logic? You truly are special.
" --- I think the answer has something to do with people that hate freedom. Many people do, but they won't admit it to themselves. They truly believe they are serving the interests of freedom by locking adults in cages, for nothing more than choosing to ingest the incorrect plant or chemical compound. The rationale is that, after all, drugs steal your mind and enslave it, so we are serving freedom by caging you and presumably preventing access to your plant or chemical of choice, freeing you from your TRUE captor. --"
Shoes? I love shoes!!
By the way, I am not a huge fan of a lot of the elements of the WOD. But I am also not willing to pretty up drug use and wrap it in the flag and say it's enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
Getting high is not innocent fun. Getting hooked is the antithesis of freedom.
That face says it all.
Q: What is a Libertarian?
A: A Republican who smokes pot.
Q: What is a libertarian?
A: A democrat that can add
Q: What is a gay libertarian?
A: A democrat that can add but can't multiply
Then go. Be your Brother's Keeper. Just stop wasting billions of dollars in our tax money doing it. Pony up your own resrouces.
Most of us learn to live with that fact. Drug warriors see it as an opportunity to control society.
-- Which is a form of sickness. So it goes.
Well, she didn't exactly "get sick and die." She was a meth addict. Now, one could rightly call a "sickness" whatever demons it was that she had that led her to destroy herself. And if it hadn't been meth that got her, it probably would have been something else. But I have rough time just writing it off as "oh, well."
I have a tough time with 'warriors' that violate our BOR's, and just write it off as "oh, well."
By the way, I am not a huge fan of a lot of the elements of the WOD. But I am also not willing to pretty up drug use and wrap it in the flag and say it's enshrined in the Bill of Rights.
I'm 'prettying up' nothing. Protecting our Bill of Rights is more important than supposedly 'protecting' drug addicts by writing & enforcing prohibitions.
Getting high is not innocent fun.
More straw - never said it was.
Getting hooked is the antithesis of freedom.
Tell it to your chaplain.
That face says it all.
It's the face of a sick woman. Prohibitions are the face of a sick Republic.
spam
spam
I just wish that stupidity hurt!
Spam? What? The crap in her head?
It's a small hope, but it is still there.
Getting hooked on drugs is its own punishment with ofetn fatal consequences. Sounds like a self-correcting problem to me.
New candidates for that position keep popping up:
#34 by mnehrling
Thanks, I'll add that to my profile...
Feel free. Gotta love it when a man is proud of spamming.
Prepared for the Denver Area Science Fiction Association, February 19, 1994
Speaking of spam, you forgot to add an important part of the article, the sub-heading:
Prepared for the Denver Area Science Fiction Association, February 19, 1994
Matt, only a phony would think that an "important part". Get a grip on your spammish obsession, before you turn into a real ham.
Hey clown...Do us a favor ...don't look in the mirror.
You also seem to be obsessed with accusing your opponents of drug use.
Obsessions can be ugly symptoms of disease my boy. Think about that as you continue playing your childish spam game.
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