Posted on 09/08/2002 9:22:43 PM PDT by doug from upland
The evening started innocently enough for Brian Whitman, Sunday evening talk show host on KABC in Los Angeles.
He had on his show four minor candidates running for governor of California. Three were on the phone and the fourth, Libertarian candidate Gary Copeland, was in studio.
The conversation eventually turned to illegal immigration. Copeland did not like Whitman's position and called him a racist. Although Whitman kept trying to answer, Copeland kept talking over him and would not let him speak.
Just as Whitman puts callers in "timeout" on his show when they won't let him have his say, he told the engineer to cut off Copeland's microphone. Copeland became incensed and started packing his things to leave the studio.
Then, in great FReeper tradition, Whitman told Copeland not to let the door hit his ass on the way out. He also called Copeland a lunatic.
Then the rain came. Copeland walked over to Whitman and spit in his face. Whitman couldn't believe it. Two others on the KABC staff couldn't believe it.
Whitman had the station call the police and is considering filing assault charges.
Poor Copeland. He may no longer be the Libertarian candidate for governor. An official high ranking representative of the party called in to Whitman and told him that Copeland would be receiving no more backing and they were going to see what they could do to take him off the ballot.
Now that was classic talk radio. The unbelievable happened. A candidate for governor actually showed himself to be a bigger jackass than Gray Davis. Davis has spit on the law but never on Whitman, at least not yet. Brian, get him in studio.
In truth, it was, at the time, regarded as necessary because most folks still understood (in 1919), that the powers granted to the Federal government under the Constitution were few and specifically defined, while the rights of individuals are many and not all listed in the document. Reread the D of I, and the IX and X amendments. In 1919, folks understood more clearly that if they wanted to grant more power to the Federal Government, it had to be done via Constitutional Amendment, a deliberately arduous process.
You are right that "dope" is neither alcohol nor RKBA, but the point is irrelevant and immaterial. The power presently assumed by the Feds to prohibit possession or use of "dope", is illegitimate on its face, regardless of whether one thinks that "dope" ought to be prohibited or not.
I take it that you prefer rampant crime, turf wars, smuggling of ever greater quantities of ever more potent intoxicants, corruption of law enforcement, clogging of our courts, and the injury or death of innocent bystanders and law enforcement officers over the more sensible (and effective) approach of peacefully educating to reduce demand.
Very strange. I'll bet you think I'm a doper, too!
Excellent! You've read Heinlein. Have you gotten around to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress?
I agree with the statement, but it does not follow that one protects individual rights by compromising or destroying those same rights.
For those who may not know, TANSTAAFL stands for "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch".
Not so. Our claim is that defining something as a crime does not make the action wrong. Surely you are aware of the legal concepts of Malum In Se and Malum Prohibitum?
It was once illegal to shelter runaway slaves. Those who did so (and the escaping slaves themselves) broke the law, and were heroes in doing so.
It was once legal to own slaves. Those who did so acted within the law, but were committing serious crime.
Get it?
Who said it's either/or?
Like I said, we'll see.
I agree, and this is why physicians are not allowed to write scripts for narcotics for themselves or their immediate family.
BTW, I barely even go out or drink, and VERY rarely smoke MJ - usually only with my brother on break. You can't make it thrugh med school messed up all the time, maybe geniuses can, but I'm not in that category.
Words are cheap. You are in favor of whatever consquences flow from the positions you take, advocate, and champion. Powerfully so. Undeniably so. Your words to the contrary are mere air wheezing into the ether.
Legalizing or decriminalizing illicit drugs will not cause the external costs associated with those drugs to disappear. They will merely be repackaged and forced down the taxpayers' throat in another form. We will pay to coddle drug abusers instead of punishing them.
That's reality. Your pro-dope mental constructs are not reality.
I've extended an olive branch here and I'd like to discuss this civilly. So, you can obviously do what you want, but I'd be nice to keep a civil tone.
First of all, I was in no way comparing dope smokers to heroes. I was citing an obvious example in which the law was clearly wrong, and those who broke it were obviously right. They (both escaped slaves and those who sheltered them) were regarded in some circles as criminals and "scofflaws", but it was in that case clearly the right thing to do, despite being unlawful.
I make no such assertion regarding dope smokers. Their habit, in most cases, is what we would characterize as a vice (were it legal and not done to excess), similar to smoking tobacco (nicotine being a powerfully addictive and dangerous drug) or drinking alcohol (another powerful and dangerous drug) in moderation. In some situations, marijuana and cocaine (and wine or beer) are at least alleged to be therapeutic, and many doctors agree.
But vices are not inherently criminal. In general, we prefer to discourage vices rather than criminalizing them, and in the case of alcohol, we forbid certain activities like driving or handling firearms while under the influence. ("Avoid strong drink", goes the saying, "it can make you shoot at revenooers, and miss!")
The purpose of the law is to maximize peaceful cooperation while minimizing the overall levels of coercion. Hence, the coercion required to minimize violent crimes like murder, rape, robbery or assault is justified because it decreases the overall level of coercion and violence in our society, while redressing real harm done to real victims. Traffic regulations also serve to maximize peaceful cooperation by providing each of us with a reliable expectation of everyone else's behavior on our roads. We easily avoid conflict on our roads because, by and large, we honor those rules and they do not often change, so our expectations are realistic.
With drug prohibition, this is not the case. Demand for these substances is persistent and elastic with regard to cost. Enforcement is problematic, interdiction difficult and fiercely resisted. The cost of enforcement is enormous, and realization of the continuing failure of their efforts has prompted law enforcement to seek ever more intrusive powers by which to seek out and arrest those engaging in the black market trade. The result has been an incremental loss of freedom, even for those of us who have no connection to the drug trade at all.
The efforts continue to fail: each year we hear stories of new interdictions of record-breaking quantities of MJ or cocaine or crack or heroin, but these anecdotes only serve to illuminate the failure of interdiction as a strategy. The dollar value of the drug market, by best estimates, continues to increase. The record confiscations are only minor setbacks to the smugglers.
The point, which we seem not to have learned from our experience with alcohol prohibition, is that vice is not crime. Yes, those who engage in their chosen vices often injure themselves and occasionally injure others, but only in the latter circumstance does it make sense to involve law enforcement. So we ignore the vice of smoking, except to tax it and propagandize against it, and we ignore the vice of drinking, except to tax it and propagandize against it, except in those cases where someone who is intoxicated drives poorly enough to be noticed for creating a hazard to or injuring others. Creating the hazard is sanctioned, and causing injury is punished criminally, as it should be.
Regardless of the relevance (or lack thereof) of the LP as a political force, many or most of their principled positions are sound and well considered. Saying that "the LP is irrelevant so we don't have to listen to them" is a rather childish approach to rational discourse, don't you think?
I suppose you could say that it isn't, given that even while unsuccessfully pursueing the WOD, we do attempt to "educate" our children about the dangers of drug use.
But most of them understand that what they are hearing is propaganda, not education, so we are unsuccessful there as well. Some of us remember "Reefer Madness", a ridiculous attempt at propagandizing via film. In colleges, it was often considered great fun to watch the movie while getting high. Why? Because everyone who had ever smoked pot knew that the movie was a lie.
There are two main hazards associated with the use of propaganda. First, those being subjected to it may (and often do) come to lose all respect for the law and authority. Second, the propagandists may come to believe their own lies, to their ultimate undoing. There is ample historical precedent for this, dating back at least to ancient Rome.
You know, one good working definition of insanity is to keep doing the same things, expecting miraculously to achieve different results.
Come again? Slaves were property, not people? Are you joking, or just bereft of your senses?
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