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.
I like bourbon chocolates.
The liberals love the drug war because it makes the convservtives complicit in their abuse of the commerce clause.
Makes them complicit? I see more and more "Conservatives" happily skipping along hand in hand with the leftists when it comes to the "Drug War".
The problem with this brand of “libertarianism” is that it is simply a license to be a drug induced burden on society-meaning you play, we pay.
We curentlyhave enough of a burden due to such “legal” behaviors-thousands of alcohol related fatalities on the roads each year, more boating and other machinery realted “operating under the influence” casualities. Thusands of drug related deaths due to overdose and crime.
Alcohol is legal, but much of the behavior it involves is less than responsible, let alone legal and moral.
Legalizing (and taxing) these drugs (including alcohol) is not the answer. The answer lies in education and making its use so much less rewarding than it currently is.
Personally I fail to see why we continue to call it a drug war. Its really all about access for all products and “services”.
I think your whole post boils down to one thing, this Country has lost the capacity to hold an INDIVIDUAL personally accountable. These days, its always someone or something else's fault.
When I was younger I held to the more libertarian view that drugs are someone else’s problem, a matter of individual choice. But my life experience has taught me that the war on drugs, in some way, must be continued, just as much as we criminalize murder or theft.
The war on drugs goes hand in hand with the larger idea of being committed to one’s family. I’m not talking about the wishy washy liberal notion of “love”. I’m talking about actually making a commitment to the people you are spending your life with - your wife, your children, your parents, brothers and sisters.
When someone is on drugs, they can’t honor their commitments. They simply can’t. Always with someone who has a drug problem, there are other family members who suffer from emotional and financial neglect. People on drugs say they can “keep it together”, but then destructively rationalize their own selfish interests at the expense of everyone around them. There are countless children who do not have holiday gifts or parents around because their parents are stoned. There are coworkers left holding the bag on a project and putting their own jobs at stake because someone is stoned or drunk. There are mothers who weep, fathers who break, children who resent, companies that founder, all for the supposedly harmless and individual benefit of the physical sensation of being high.
The thing that ultimately causes the conservative to be different and better than his or her liberal counterpart is commitment. Liberals avoid commitment in anything. They assault marriage, religion, all largely because you have to make a commitment. For them, I suppose, this shallower life
without genuine trust is something, but for me, as a conservative, real social bonds and familial bonds formed by commitment honored and trust forged is more than any lets all go our own way talking points uttered in a movie, and yes, I prefer to do deal with people who can make a commitment as much as I can. The commitmentless life of individual drug and sexual moires and self-entertainment is simply not for me, and I think it is right to call these people as faithless and ruinous as they are.
The problem with your argument is the implicit assumption that everyone who consumes alcohol or imbibes another substance must be causing harm to society, an assumption that is NOT true.
We curentlyhave enough of a burden due to such “legal” behaviors-thousands of alcohol related fatalities on the roads each year, more boating and other machinery realted “operating under the influence” casualities. Thusands of drug related deaths due to overdose and crime.
Then punish people for the crimes they have committed.
Legalizing (and taxing) these drugs (including alcohol) is not the answer. The answer lies in education and making its use so much less rewarding than it currently is.
Any government that can tell you what you can and can't consume can also make decisions for you with regard to your health care.
No thanks, we see where all that has taken us.
It's time for liberty and personal responsibility. Once you decide that use of naughty vegetables is a reason to deprive someone of their liberties you are playing for the other team.
One additional thought-I always wonder if the folks who write these “legalize dangerous and addictive drug” articles would be the first ones who would go out and purchase/use (I suppose at the local pharmacy? With a prescription, maybe?) said substances and proceed to drive, fly, walk the doggie etc while under the “infulence”. Talk about revenue generation-think of all the addintional cops the government would buy in order to “regulate” the use thereof? Ridiculous I say.
While I am at it, how many more lawyers? Think of all the additional suits brought by grieving parents and families over the “________ while under the influence” deaths and serious injuries....
Think of the unintended consequences and the law of third order effects and maybe you’ll realize the war on drugs IS the lowest cost option.
In any case, plan on a ton of bricks falling on you (speakign figuratively, of course) if you, under the influence of any legal or illegal substance, kill main or injure me or mine.
Enjoy your wonderland theories, but don’t think they’ll come to fruition on my watch.
Best;
I'm a libertarian and disagree. This is part of the consistency of libertarianism: people should be made to live with the consequences of their bad decisions. Abuse drugs all you want, but don't come to me (through the governement) to bail you out.
The two “wars” that I can think of that weren’t really wars - War on Drugs and War on Poverty - have both been dismal failures. Does that tell us something? I believe that it does.
There already are lots of cops going after folks and lots of lawyers, largely because of the "war" on drugs.
Your argument is a strawman.
It's a pity too many confuse libertarianism with libertinism.
It’s not even about government, at this point. If you’ve got a spouse that suffers, a child that suffers, or a family and a community you neglect through your selfish behavior, you are hurting people.
“The problem with your argument is the implicit assumption that everyone who consumes alcohol or imbibes another substance must be causing harm to society, an assumption that is NOT true.”
Got any number to prove your comment? If not all, how many then, are indeed causing harm?
I certainly understand your perspective and I agree on the point that many behaviors are potentially injurious to others, but drving a car is not the same as driving one under the influence of any state altering substance.
I heard of a story where a boy was killed by his neighbor’s push lawn mower-he ran over a baseball and the mower threw it across the yard and hit the boy-Certainly that is not the same as if the man ran the boy over becasue he was seeing horrible insects crawling on his skin due to the heroin coursing through his veins, no?
Let’s not give into the “revenue generation” and “my personal freedom” story lines concerning legitimatizing dangerous substances, that is so beneath thinking, caring people.
Happy Resurection Day, in any case!
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