It's evidence liberals and those conservatives really do not differ - they both want and welcome Government into their lives, just for slightly different reasons.
>> It’s a shame more so-called “small government” conservatives fail to realize or simply do not care what the War On Drugs has done to the Fourth Amendment and prison budgets.
> It’s evidence liberals and those conservatives really do not differ - they both want and welcome Government into their lives, just for slightly different reasons.
Points about liberty vs use of government for social good purpose are well-taken.
I am not so libertarian that I’d forbid the government from intervening when Party A does something to harm innocent Party B while I am observing as Party C.
This is one of the legitimate purposes of government: to enforce contracts. Or, in this case, to prevent Party A from imposing his will against the interests of less powerful Party B, who has not agreed to a contract with A.
In the case of drugs and alcohol and gambling, many Party A’s do indeed infringe on the freedoms and liberties of many Party B’s: their spouses, children, neighbors, communities by their use and abuse of intoxicants.
We conservatives, unlike liberals and unlike full-fledged libertarians, do believe in the use of government to intervene in contract breeches. The data on drug, alcohol, and gambling is strong enough that we can predict a widespread deleterious effect on spouses, friends, children, etc. when these vices are legalized and freely available. The conservative can remain a conservative and support criminalization of a narrow range of vices.
We care very much, but the abuses of our rights are a separate question from the need to keep drugs from doing to our nation what they did to China.
The Drug laws are being used as an excuse to enlarge government power, but so is air pollution, education, "gay" rights, Global warming, and so on.
EVERYTHING is being used to expand and increase government power, and by focusing on the single example of the drug war, you are missing the bigger picture and the threat that it comprises.
Rational people recognize that there is a specific quantity of government which is necessary to guarantee societal freedom. We must have a common defense. We must have common justice. Government is the only manner in which this may be accomplished.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
The conservative recognizes that we need some government, unlike the Liberal socialist who thinks we need total government, or the Libertarian kooks who think we need none at all.