Posted on 02/04/2014 2:32:35 PM PST by SeekAndFind
For a magazine that styles itself Reason, it’s surprisingly unreasonable.
Nick Gillespie of Reason attacks Truth Revolt’s Ben Shapiro for writing that “Philip Seymour Hoffman['s] self-inflicted death is yet another hallmark of the broken leftist culture that dominates Hollywood, enabling rather than preventing the loss of some of its greatest talents. Libertarianism becomes libertinism without a cultural force pushing back against the penchant for sin; Hollywood has no such cultural force.”
It’s a point that’s rather hard to argue with. Freedom opens up the arena for individual character to define how people will use it. Freedom alone is a blank slate that allows people to impose order on their own lives.
Gillespie not only argues against it, but makes a thoroughly ridiculous argument. “Shapiro’s implication that libertarianism is the root cause of Hoffman’s overdose isn’t simply churlish and uninformed by anything resembling knowledge of Hoffman’s life, thoughts, or circumstances of death (though it is that). It is plainly nonsensical.”
That’s not what Shaprio is saying, but Reason has its theme, which is what libertarianism is being unfairly blamed for the death of a Hollywood actor and it has the solution…
“If Shapiro thought about it for a minute rather than calling up his outrage macro in Word, he might ask what sort of drug policy might lead to better outcomes. Generally speaking, people have enough trouble admitting substance-abuse problems without also having to admit that they are criminals too. Maybe legalizing or decriminalizing drugs would lead to an environment in which abuse would be minimized along with the ill effects of the black markets spawned by prohibition.”
Sure, we’ll cut down on overdoses by legalizing heroin. The needle park solution always works.
Do Hollywood celebrities abuse drugs because drug laws make them feel like criminals? Would they use less drugs if using drugs was more legally and socially acceptable?
Would Philip Seymour Hoffman have avoided overdosing on heroin if he could have bought it at the local drug store?
Since the addictive mechanism combined with tolerance, which is the effect that causes escalating drug use to achieve the same results, and the emotional cycle of self-medicating, is what causes the escalation of drug use, it’s hard to see how making an addictive drug that chemically diminishes free will is the solution to preventing drug abuse.
It’s like fighting slavery by legalizing slavery. Hoffman wasn’t abusing heroin because it was illegal. He was abusing heroin because it was available.
Yeah, THAT's the TICKET!...............
We need to start asking ourselves as conservatives why we go out of our way to try and save the lives of those who hate us and wish to destroy our way of life?
Maybe we should consider handing out free heroin instead to liberal cities?
I was thinking the same thing. You beat me to the post by mentioning it.
The argument for doing away with drug laws is not that the drugs will not continue to cause harm. The argument is the drug laws themselves do more harm than good.
Daniel Greenfield is absolutely correct. Legalizing an evil does not make it less evil.
How the hell does someone get into that anyway? Seriously, how does that work? You’re at a party one night and someone comes up to you and says “Hey Bud, you wanna try some HEROIN?” “Hey yeah sure, why not?” “OK, all you gotta do is let me INJECT it into your vein...” “Oh WOW that sounds AWESOME! I can get AIDS from sharing that needle right? AWESOME!”
However, there will be so many restrictions put on addicts that libertarians will long for the old days when addicts could score illegally without having to register with the government and submit to state regulation of their habits.
Slavery was once legal in America. Took the worst war this nation ever fought to end it. So when is the end of the drug war?
And criminalizing every bad idea helps shrink leviathan how?
What next ? make gluttony a crime?
RE: Daniel Greenfield is absolutely correct. Legalizing an evil does not make it less evil.
I think the argument is not whether or not shooting heroine is evil — the argument is how BEST to minimize its use. Both conservatives and libertarians agree that using heroine is bad, the issue is POLICY — How best to minimize it with the least cost to society.
Libertarians claim that legalizing it ( which does not mean approving of it ) is the best way to achieve that. Conservatives claim that it will create more harm than good.
And so the debate goes...
So stupid.
Yeah I know Reason is really a libertarian magazine, but they need to keep their legalization philosophy on benign stuff that grows in the ground, that is a waste of money to police, and not press their luck with advocating for the legalization of essentially manufactured toxic chemical concoctions that can actually kill someone.
No, but it may help get the bad batches off the market, because because producers will have an incentive to not kill their customers.
Celebrity drug addicts? Who cares?
Let them all OD.
The sooner the better.
“Daniel Greenfield is absolutely correct. Legalizing an evil does not make it less evil.”
Sure. But that’s not the point.
The point is our huge bloated, para-military, police state that does nothing to protect against drugs and is just sitting there, ready to be used, by the next Hitler.
Maybe we could approach this as though we were citizens of the same country with similar interests, rather than as members of hostile factions out to destroy each other.
Drugs help clean the Gene Pool
There could be free meth, heroine, etc sitting at 7-Eleven and I doubt very much the rate of use as a percentage of the population would increase.
Now, the users who used would go on a self-destructive orgy of drugs, mind you, but they do that now, anyway, albeit it take a year or so longer.
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