Turn Out the Red Light? (Amsterdam Closing Brothels)

I will miss Amsterdam. While it seems to many that the purpose of going there is sex and drugs, the truth of the matter is that Amsterdam is, or at least was, an island of freedom. In many ways, it feels, or at least felt, like America must have in its youth.

Few people know that the great silent industry of Amsterdam is, or at least was, religion. But that, too, is being displaced, because it, likewise, was too free. Missionaries from many sects found Amsterdam to be a permanent conclave of faith.

It was not being liberal that made Amsterdam free; in fact, it is the liberals who want to end it as a port of freedom. For they hate and fear the pleasant chaos of liberty, be it in the pleasures of the flesh or the soul.

The liberals first weapon was to permit vast numbers of those who also disliked freedom, to enter their country and city. The liberals value such people more than their own people, because they are repressed, inhibited, and intolerant. In turn, the newcomers support the liberals in their quest to vanquish liberty.

So what will become of Amsterdam? If the liberals have their way, it will be purged of its joy and color, it will neither offer sin or salvation, and it will become just another generic gray European city.

The mood of the place will change from friendliness and kindness, to the dreary despair, racial hatred, and alcoholic depression that liberals usually leave in their wake.

Or the Dutch will wise up, turn back the tide of liberal decay and degeneration, no longer offer endless amenities to those who despise them, and let people enjoy their lives, whether it lead to lethargy or elation, hell or heaven.

Do not be too fast to condemn was what in that city, for it still holds, or at least held, the liberty that Americans used to revel in, before it was denied us.

I wonder how free people in neighborhoods o0verrun with addicts will feel when hard drugs are legalized?

Hard to imagine anything would change. They are there now, aren't they?

I basically think pro drug war conservatives are just libertarians that have not had a SWAT Team kick down their door and stick a machine gun down their daughter's throat, all the while saying "I am going to F#### kill you if you move!!!"

After all, we are all just one ticked off neighbor from having that happen to us (no knock search searches based on anonymous tipsters are extremely common these days).

The fact is that any prohibition against social ills is a failure if your criteria for success is complete elimination of those ills. We'll never eliminate rape, murder, theft, etc. Yet by your definition and standards, we should just eliminate police because we'll never be rid of those things?

I believe there should be laws against things that harm others. It is hard to make the case that someone who sits at home and smokes a joint after work is harming someone else.

Rape, murder, and theft are not vices, they are harmful to others. Vice crimes, however, require you to make some argument about how you are being victimized by other people's behavior. That does not work for me because I do not have a "I am a victim" mentality.

The only way this drug war makes sense is to outlaw the rest of the drugs: alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, etc.

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