Posted on 05/25/2006 6:51:03 AM PDT by Mr. Silverback
It's not an insult, it's a statement of truth. Words have meanings - which you now know since I posted the definition. Whether I call you one or not doesn't change the fact of your being so, unless you stop being one. It's fundamentally different from my calling you a puppy, swatting your own vomit around, as you did me.
Is there any level of harm (to nondrug users), if definitively shown to be a result of drug use by YOUR OWN standards, that would dissuade you?
Yes. If there is some level of absolutely unavoidable harm to others engendered by drug use, then a discussion of the harms to others vs. the merits to the one can enter, and then regulation or prohibition can be discussed. (E.g. nerve gas, and plutonium whose use have very high probability of very grave harm to others.) However, I happen to know that with the exception of PCP, using drugs brings only a vanishing probability of unavoidable harm to others, and for PCP I don't know whether the probability is very low, low, or moderate, but I do know it is less than the majority, because PCP is used by thousands each year, and there are only a few stories of someone on a PCP rampage. Alcohol, which kills ~50,000 / year, most of them the drinkers, but many of them innocents, is worse than any illegal drug - including PCP at least on a numbers level if not in probability, and yet remains legal - and so should serve as a guideline for what sort of level of harm is tolerable. Speaking of PCP, I believe that if other less hazardous drugs were legally available, demand for PCP could be brought nearly to zero.
Assuming from previous attempts that there is zero chance of your actually answering my question,
Wrong again.
You need to start a Constitutional Amendment process. I'm sure you don't think it should be necessary, but given our history with slavery, etc. you'll just have to accept it. If I understand your positions correctly it needs to say:
All behaviors and actions are hereby legal despite any probability of resulting harm, danger, or bodily injury. Only actions that actually result in direct harm will be punishable.
That should cover it. No more regulations of any kind, no traffic laws (against recklessness), no more building codes, no limits on anything of any kind (that are designed to prevent harm).
Of course this is a groteque straw man argument - once again. (What is it with you and logical fallacies?) I have already stated I support laws against negligence and recklessness, and I have already stated I support regulation of nerve gas and plutonium. I have also made the distinction between harm to innocent others, and harm to oneself, which you fail to make above. So you grossly misrepresent my position in the above.
I predict you will fail miserably, at which point you will have to decide whether to undertake an insurrection, or accept curbs in a republican democracy.
LOL! This is a Constitutional Republic, not a "republican democracy." But you knew that right, and are just attempting satire, right? You do know that this country was not set up as a democracy, right? Right?
Now could you afford me the courtesy of answering my questions, posed in my last post?
One more thing - the Drug War brings harm to nondrug users, e.g. higher taxes, rights violations, and the occasional wrong-address no-knock raid resulting in death of innocent people. Is there any level of harm (to nondrug users), if definitively shown to be a result of the drug war by YOUR OWN standards, that would dissuade you?
I submit to you that more innocent people have been killed directly by the Drug War than by smoking pot, for starters. Yet you continue to ignore the harms of the drug war.
You're just chock full of logical fallacies, aren't you! That's known as the fallacy, the "appeal to the majority." A majority of Southerners supported Jim Crow laws in the past, a majority of residents of Kali, New York, Taxachussetts, Chicago, and other places support gun prohibitions, and a majority of US voters (but, fortunately, not Electoral College voters) supported Al Gore for president in 2000. That doesn't make any of them right, and it doesn't make you right either.
you might want to try to disprove it yourself.
Since you are the one who wants to violently deprive others of rights, the burden of proof for the necessity of doing so rests on you. Here's the Presumption Of Tyranny again, coming from you: All laws, however tyrannical they might be, are assumed valid unless people can PROVE they should be repealed. A situation that is much closer to the founding father's intent is that all laws should sunset, unless there is a clear and convincing argument to continue some of them. How would you argue against those supporting Jim Crow laws, again? You have never answered that question. In your answer, remember your support for majority positions, the presumtion that laws are valid, and the significance of statistical relationships between crime and the subjects of laws in question. (This is going to be good!)
You can hold out on me doing days of research, but I frankly don't need to, to win this argument, and I don't think any statistic on this is capable of changing your mind.
On the other hand, if you had statistics from a non-interested party, with solid research, showing that only 3% (for instance) of crack users ever committed crimes to pay for their drugs, then I would find that very compelling toward legalization,
Well, how about this for a statistic:
Why do you suppose the murder rate dropped after Prohibition ended? If alcohol leads people to the path of criminality and violence, as the Prohibitionists did claim, then allowing "easy access to alcohol" (as the gun grabbers would say) should lead to escalation of murder rates at the end of Prohibition. But that isn't what happened, is it?
even though I still wouldn't consider it a right.
Yes, it's obvious that consideration of rights plays a miniscule role in your thought process, e.g. the right to keep and bear arms, which you would revoke if, as the gun grabbers claim, guns lead people to commit crimes!
Other interesting numbers that aren't in themselves meaningful.
"24% of violence against Police is committed by those under the influence of drugs.
72% of violence on police committed by those with history of drug use."
http://www.dea.gov/demand/speakout/07so.htm
Given that drug use is illegal, and that police spend a large fraction of their time committing violence on drug users, these factoids are neither surprising nor revealing.
This is what I mean by being careful not to just be dismissed as a crank.
I offered up front that these statistics in themselves (just like the ones you offered, thus the purpose) don't really mean anything definitive in themselves. But instead of concurring, or stating that it is a chicken and egg argument, you take off on a knee jerk rant about how its the police officers at fault for being assaulted. What percentage of the calls began with a call to the police about a crime or violence? The police very rarely stop anyone (who isn't driving) on suspicion of being high. Just a tip, but paranoia never endears confidence.
That's right, they don't, although you find statistical arguments more persuasive than I do. Having gotten them from the DEA itself, you can be sure they are represented in a context that sheds the least light on the question. (Sort of like getting "gun violence" facts from the Brady Campaign, or "Black facts" from the KKK.) The DEA has a vested interest in making sure people are afraid of drug use and drug users, because they're all out of a job if the policies go away. Incidentally, the statistics you cited contain the same fallacy as "100% of firearms homicides are committed by gun owners" - a fallacy that you haven't admitted to committing, though I have explained it in a previous post. Once again, the question shouldn't be, what fraction of people who assault police officers use drugs, but rather, of those who use drugs, how many assault police officers?
To draw a sharper point on it, what fraction of people who assault cops are black, are drunk, or have ever drunk alcohol in their lives (~100%)? What fraction who shoot at cops are gun owners? The answers to these questions are misleading, because of the fallacy, but there's the trusty DEA, banging the same drum. (And there's you, citing it even though I acknowledged and explained the fallacy, after YOU correctly identified the "non-sensical" comparison, as you put it, in a different context.)
But instead of concurring, or stating that it is a chicken and egg argument, you take off on a knee jerk rant about how its the police officers at fault for being assaulted.
I beg your pardon (again), but I made no such claim. Straw man. I said it was neither surprising nor revealing that drug users disproportionately assault police officers, nothing more, nothing less. I did not claim it was the police officers "fault" as you falsely represent. I'll give you an example since you fail to see that this is true: Suppose it were illegal to speak Spanish in America - that it was prohibited, and that there was a War On Spanish, aggressively being fought. Clearly, a lot of police would be spending their time looking for such people, and arresting them, and clearly, there will be a lot of assaults on officers just because that's what sometimes happens. I will not, and do not, claim that it is the officer's "fault" that such assaults occur, although I would oppose such a war as you might expect, and I might expect a certain amount of resentment coming from the recipients of this war, irrespective of the objective harm that being able to speak Spanish brings (namely zero).
What percentage of the calls began with a call to the police about a crime or violence?
Circular argument. If using drugs is a crime, then the call might about someone using drugs, in which case, the fraction of calls that involve drugs is expectedly higher.
Just a tip, but paranoia never endears confidence.
Considering your use of logical fallacies in your posts to me, I don't think you're in much of a position to be dispensing tips.
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