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 don't hold those against you.
Your character, reflected in the kind of misdirection demonstrated by comments like that is another matter.
So, what are your credentials — perhaps a psychology degree to back up your assessments of my character?
After nearly 60 years, you learn that when somebody argues in half-truths and evasions the odds that you'll eventually regret any association with them.
Do you have any credentials — aside from years roughly equivalent to my own?
I have no letters. If that is your requirement, please say so.
To submit that formal education is not required, and then turn around and ask for credentials is not presenting an impression of good faith or sincerity.
Education, whether formal or self-taught, is a benefit and makes a difference — as does its absence. Your inability to identify a reading that tipped you toward hostility to stare decisis suggests that you have not taken the trouble to become acquainted with any pertinent scholarship.
Your assertion that I am unable to provide one when it has been provided explicitly more than once suggests you have not taken the trouble to acquaint yourself with the concept of veracity.
Cite the books or articles of legal scholarship that you were influenced by or relied on. Or just name the conservative legal scholar who shares your views as to stare decisis. It’s not much to ask.
I seem to have no disgreement with Clarence Thomas on the issue of stare decisis.
Yet your denunciations of stare decisis go much further than Clarence Thomas.
Really? What's the metric for length of a denuciation? How do you measure how "far" Clarence Thomas' go, so that you can hold mine up to them for comparison?
Can you provide the evidence to support our assertions, or are they meaningless drivel made up out of thin air to sound good but have no discernible substance?
Read your earlier posts.
The folks who would use drugs under those conditions are already doing it today.
Answer the question, and back up your claims.
Scary stuff.
Read your posts and compare then to Thomas’s opinions. Unless memory fails me completely, he has never denounced the character of colleagues on the other side of an issue.
And none of his coleqgues on the other side of the issue ever accused him of basing his support for original intent on a desire to smoke dope that I recall.
I don't consider personal attacks a valid basis for argument, but if answering them in kind is the only thing that's going to be understood, I can do that if I have to.
According to the Constitution, the border is the federal government’s domain. There’s no question about thier authority there.
Oh, that’s your excuse? I thought it was because you long ago exhausted your stock of pertinent subject matter knowledge.
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