Posted on 04/04/2010 6:51:11 AM PDT by rabscuttle385
An article by a conservative named Cliff Kincaid, who serves as editor of the Accuracy in Media (AIM) Report, provides a perfect example of how different libertarians are from conservatives and, well, for that matter, how there ain't a dime's worth of difference, when it comes to individual freedom, between conservatives and liberals.
The article concerns the drug war and is entitled, "Dopey Conservatives for Dope." Ardently defending the continuation of the drug war, despite some 35 years of manifest failure, Kincaid takes fellow conservatives to task who are finally joining libertarians in calling for an end to the drug war. He specifically mentions columnist Steve Chapman, whose article "In the Drug War, Drugs are Winning," which was posted on the website of the conservative website Townhall.com, was apparently what set Kincaid off.
Chapman made the point that it is the illegality of drugs that has produced the drug gangs and cartels, along with all the violence that has come with them. The reason that such gangs and cartels fear legalization is that they know that legalization would put them out of business immediately.
Consider alcohol. Today, there are thousands of liquor suppliers selling alcohol to consumers notwithstanding the fact that liquor might be considered harmful to people. They have aggressive advertising and marketing campaigns and are doing their best to maximize profits by providing a product that consumers wish to buy. Their competitive efforts to expand market share are entirely peaceful.
Now, suppose liquor production or distribution was made a federal felony offense, just like drug production or distribution. At that point, all the established liquor businesses would go out of business.
However, prohibition wouldn't mean that liquor would cease being produced or distributed. It would simply mean that a new type of supplier would immediately enter the black (i.e., illegal) market to fill the void. Those suppliers would be similar in nature to the current suppliers in the drug business or, say, Al Capone -- that is, unsavory people who have no reservations about resorting to violence, such as murdering competitors and killing law-enforcement officers, to expand market share.
At that point, the only way to put these Al Capone-type of people out of business would be by legalizing booze. Once prohibition of alcohol was ended, the violent liquor gangs would immediately go out of business and legitimate businesses would return to the liquor market. The same holds true for drug prohibition.
The big objection to the drug war, however, is not its manifest failure and destructiveness but rather its fundamental assault on individual freedom. If a person isn't free to ingest any substance he wants, then how can he possibly be considered free?
Yet, for decades Kincaid and most other conservatives and most liberals have taken the audacious position that the state should wield the power to punish a person for doing bad things to himself. In fact, the drug war reflects perfectly the nanny-state mindset that has long afflicted both conservatives and liberals. They feel that the state should be a nanny for American adults, treating them like little children, sending them to their jail cell when they put bad things in their mouths.
Kincaid justifies his statism by saying that drugs are bad for people. Even if that's true -- and people should be free to decide that for themselves, as they do with liquor -- so what? Why should that be any business of the state? If I wish to do bad things to myself, why should the likes of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, George W. Bush, and John McCain wield the power to put me into jail for that?
Quite simply, Kincaid: It ain't any of your business or anyone else's business what I ingest, whether it's booze, drugs, candy, or anything else. I am not a drone in your collective bee hive. I am an individual with the natural, God-given right to live my life any way I choose, so long as my conduct doesn't involve the initiation of force against others.
For decades, conservatives and liberals have been using the drug war as an excuse to assault freedom, free enterprise, privacy, private property, civil liberties, and the Constitution. They have brought nothing but death, violence, destruction, and misery with their 35-year old failed war on drugs. There would be no better place to start dismantling the statism that afflicts our land than by ending the drug war.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.
See my post #78
There is one nit that I have with Hornberger's likening the Drug War with Prohibition, however. Even though it is very clear that Prohibition brought about the rise of gang violence when bootleggers fought each other over territory, the end of Prohibition did not put an end to gang violence; organized crime had to diversify into gambling, unions and prostitution to continue in "business."
As for the now-legalized liquor business,
They have aggressive advertising and marketing campaigns and are doing their best to maximize profits by providing a product that consumers wish to buy. Their competitive efforts to expand market share are entirely peaceful.We should add that the liquor industry (excluding beer and wine) is still a federally regulated oligopoly. Think BATFE. No reason to get violent when the big guns are on your side.
Did you know that one artifact of Prohibition is still with us even now? Alcohol produced for industrial use must be denatured to make people sick if they drink it. For scientific use, there is non-denatured alcohol, which is highly taxed. (Ask me how I know this - it was a science experiment in high school that required non-denatured alcohol, but because of the high tax put on it, I used gin instead. Didn't work.)
I refer you to a recent article in Slate which brings to light how the drug warriors of the 1920s caused the poisoning of thousands of Americans as a consequence of national alcohol Prohibition.
Who said the Nanny State is a recent invention?
However, opiates largely require importation and processing, and meth requires manufacture with a wide range of chemicals, and both would be well outside the scope of Thomas's dissent in Raich, IMO.
I wonder if Obamacare will provide coverage for conditions related to drug abuse? Pull the plug on granny, but take of the druggie.
Please...
The Government is in the pocket of the Drug Lords.
No other rationale is really necessary.
You can repeat the Government’s talking points, but you can’t erase their origins.
The Government is in the pocket of the Drug Lords - live with it.
When you can’t win the argument, claim conspiracy...
well how is that working out?
the only service a drug user is entitled to is a prison!!!
I said nothing about the limitations of state and federal governments. I said that the original statement was not well thought-out and illustrated why. You appear to be responding to something entirely beyond the scope of what I said.
Try reading it again. I am not wrong in criticizing his statement.
The I don’t see how there’s any real difference.
That doesn’t really address what I said, but ok.
The costs of more wide spread drug use out weighs the costs of the drug war. Plus the analogy to liquor prohibition does not necessarily extrapolate to drugs. Look at gambling. Gambling is legal in Nevada, but it didn’t stop the mob from going there and running the gambling. It didn’t stop the mob from getting involved with Indian gambling, either.
Politicians get huge payoffs in order to keep the "war on drugs" going so that gangs can keep selling the drugs and the LEOs can have unprecedented control over American citizens.
Think about it, dumb a**, how many no knock raids existed before the war on drugs? None. How many citizens were killed during no knock raids before the war on drugs? None.
Our government DOES NOT WANT TO WIN the war on drugs.
People like you would rather see the war on drugs continue with it's crime, killing of innocent victims, enslaving of young children on drugs in order to keep future customers simply because it goes against your beliefs.
People like you commit more sins in one day simply by allowing this BS to continue than any of us who would like to end all of this crime.
We end it by making it legal, which takes the money out of it, which means the gangs have to find some other way to make money or die out.
Also, all the onerous laws that are unconstitutional could be repealed.
You moralistic people who cause more crime than you ever stop make me sick when you claim you are for freedom, you are for making people live the way you want them to, period.
Ironically, Washington was one of the largest distillers of whiskey in early America.
What about those that don’t? If it were put up to a vote, then we would at least see how the majority thinks, instead of useless polls. I believe it will be going on the ballot in CA, if not mistaken.
From Joseph Story's Commentaries on the Constitution
"But the question is a very different one, whether, under pretence of an exercise of the power to regulate commerce, congress may in fact impose duties for objects wholly distinct from commerce. The question comes to this, whether a power, exclusively for the regulation of commerce, is a power for the regulation of manufactures? The statement of such a question would seem to involve its own answer. Can a power, granted for one purpose, be transferred to another? If it can, where is the limitation in the constitution? Are not commerce and manufactures as distinct, as commerce and agriculture? If they are, how can a power to regulate one arise from a power to regulate the other? It is true, that commerce and manufactures are, or may be, intimately connected with each other. A regulation of one may injuriously or beneficially affect the other. But that is not the point in controversy. It is, whether congress has a right to regulate that, which is not committed to it, under a power, which is committed to it, simply because there is, or may be an intimate connexion between the powers. If this were admitted, the enumeration of the powers of congress would be wholly unnecessary and nugatory. Agriculture, colonies, capital, machinery, the wages of labour, the profits of stock, the rents of land, the punctual performance of contracts, and the diffusion of knowledge would all be within the scope of the power; for all of them bear an intimate relation to commerce. The result would be, that the powers of congress would embrace the widest extent of legislative functions, to the utter demolition of all constitutional boundaries between the state and national governments. "
Importation of opiates does justify federal government intervention at the border, but justification based on claims of "manufacture" ring hollow.
I can find common ground here in legalizing and decriminalizing pot. Pot in my experience is less harmful than booze (and no, I don’t use it myself, at least not for many years).
The solution is the one actually envisioned by the Founding Fathers: This is a STATE police matter, or should be. The 50 states should be able to try what they want without fedgov involvement. Some states will do better than others - through enforcement, legalization, treatment, whatever - and the other states will eventually follow. Or people will move from those states who fail to adapt.
The real problem is an unconstitutional (no fedgov police power in the Constitution) one-size fits all fedgov approach that crushes individual and state’s rights.
Where do you get your infatuation w/ the good doctor...was he mentioned anywhere in this article? Maybe I missed it, but I didn't see his name in it.
I'm not a libertarian, but I admire & respect him. I proudly voted for him in the 2008 GOP Primary. He is a man of integrity, he has principle, & is the strongest advotcate for the Constitution that we have had in Congress sine (probably?) the early 1980's when Rep. Lawrence Patton McDonald was there & was tragically mmurdered. Progressive "conservatives" like you don't like it, but that's the way it is.
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