On so many occasions (the gold standard, the war on drugs, the Patriot Act), I and others had dismissed Libertarian concerns about their long term effects. But time has proven them right. Even if I disagree with what Libertarians propose, my days of dismissing them are over.
Prohibition failed miserably once before in this country... the only lasting effect of it was to give us organized crime.
Why anyone in their right mind would expect the same thing to succeed is beyond all logic.
Its akin to those who keep trying socialism over and over again and again, thinking this time it’ll be different.
William Buckley…
June 29, 2004, 12:07 p.m.
Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great. The laws aren’t exactly indefensible, because practically nothing is, and the thunderers who tell us to stay the course can always find one man or woman who, having taken marijuana, moved on to severe mental disorder. But that argument, to quote myself, is on the order of saying that every rapist began by masturbating.
General rules based on individual victims are unwise. And although there is a perfectly respectable case against using marijuana, the penalties imposed on those who reject that case, or who give way to weakness of resolution, are very difficult to defend. If all our laws were paradigmatic, imagine what we would do to anyone caught lighting a cigarette, or drinking a beer. Or — exulting in life in the paradigm — committing adultery. Send them all to
I'm a libertarian. I do not do drugs. I drink almost never, maybe once or twice a year.
But I wish drugs were legal and the government was out of the picture altogether. Because, once you give the government the right to tell you what you can put in your body, you've given them the right to do so many other things.
The right to tell you to lose weight. The right to tell you what you can and can't eat. The right to tell you when and where and how often to exercise.
Which is exactly what the government now does, every day. And that's just a start.
There is no limit to what the government can force you to do if you give up the right to control your body.
Many so-called conservatives call libertarians dopers. Some probably are, as are some conservatives and some liberals.
None of that changes the hard fact that drug warriors can't have it both ways. It's childish to think that when you give away power to the government, it will never be used against you.
The government uses the same power drug warriors gave up to tell the rest of us what to do. They use the same power to do no-knock-raids, shoot unarmed homeowners, do warrant-less searches, shoot family pets, and militarize local police forces.