Posted on 09/28/2001 7:45:14 AM PDT by sendtoscott
Conservatives are fond of preaching the importance of taking "individual responsibility" for one's actions and beliefs. But when you ask them whether they're willing to take responsibility for the robberies and muggings that their beloved decades-long war on drugs have produced, they always and inevitably respond with, "Oh, no. We don't intend our policies to result in those things and therefore we're not responsible for them. Only robbers and muggers, with their lack of respect for liberty and private property, are responsible for their actions and beliefs."
Today, when you ask conservatives whether they're willing to take responsibility for their beloved decades-long foreign-aid program and interventionist foreign policy that have produced so much enmity, hatred, and perverse consequences for our country, their response is, not surprisingly, the same: "Oh, no. We don't intend our policies to result in those things and therefore we're not responsible for them. Only terrorists, with their lack of respect for liberty and private property, are responsible for their actions."
Question for conservatives: With respect to welfare programs, do you still feel that good intentions don't matter and that advocates of the decades-long war on poverty should take responsibility for its destructive consequences, or do you now feel that only the food-stamp mother in the grocery-store line is responsible for her actions and beliefs?
Yeh, stop being black and the KKK will stop burning crosses in your yard.
FREE....FREE....... FREEEE common now, I KNOW you aren't that ignorant.
Exactly right and well said.
If there are to be any flames for what you wrote, then let the liberaltarians light their jays on them. Maybe that will make them happy.
So you think that ingesting harmful substances into your body and allowing others to do the same is the same as the other examples that you listed. I will use one. You said to stop dating men and you won't be raped, I believe. So you equate drug usage as the same thing as being female. You think that you were born to use drugs. I don't like this sort of logic.
Another loser playing the same tired semantic trick:
Put words in other peoples's collective mouths and then wax poetic (in his mind, of course) about how wrong, or immoral, or inconsistent it is.
Do these people really think that most conscious people are not aware of the pathetic attempt at manufactured outrage?
Of course not!
They mean well.
That's all that counts.
Yes.. obviously.
"Only terrorists, with their lack of respect for liberty and private property, are responsible for their actions."
Hard to argue with that statement.
Question for conservatives: With respect to welfare programs, do you still feel that good intentions don't matter and that advocates of the decades-long war on poverty should take responsibility for its destructive consequences, or do you now feel that only the food-stamp mother in the grocery-store line is responsible for her actions and beliefs?
False analogy. Food Stamp mothers are not perpetrators of a crime. Muggers and terrorists are. Food Stamp mothers, and the rest of society, are the victims. The advocates of the failed and foolishly contrived decades-long war on poverty are the perpetrators of "a counter productive policy, which became an entrenched institution." Now, if there were no "war on poverty" would there be more Food Stamp Mothers? Already proven that this assumption is false. There is a powerful, effective, constructive, positive alternative to the political use of the welfare system to create dependency and thereby ensure the re-election of the benif of the goodies. It is called "personal responsibility." It works, try it.
If there were no war on drugs, i.e. prohibition, would there be less damage to society from drug use? The answer is MORE damage, as we see with the case of the "legal" drug- alcohol. We as a society are so unconsciously accepting of the titanic cost in social decline, damage to physical and mental health, crime, property damage, and lost productivity, that we hardly notice the hundreds of billions lost to this scourge of American life. The "legalization" of alcohol has led to no reduction, and in many ways increased the damage that drug does to our nation. Libertarians seem to be willing to accept long term, pervasive and corrosively damaging societal effects of "legalized" and therefore widespread and unchecked, hard, addicting drug use, in order to attempt to remove the incentive for street and organized crime involving the traffic in drugs. Unless Libertarians are willing to simply stop enforcing any relevant law of any kind, including tax and licensing laws, this crime will simply mutate and evolve, as organized crime did after the end of alcohol prohibition. After prohibition is ended, it can never be restored, a fact that even Libertarians should agree with. So...
Question for Libertarians: With respect to drug legalization, do you still feel that good intentions don't matter and that advocates of the legalization of all drugs should take responsibility for its destructive consequences, or do you now feel that only the drug addict's mother, wife, husband, children, neighbors, and society at large are responsible for the drug addict's self destruction, wasted life, and burden upon the nation?
Some could argue yes, convincingly.
Morally and spiritually, if not physically.
I am a conservative, not a Libertarian, but I follow in the path blazed by Burke, Lord Acton, and Hayek.
You powder yourselves like courtiers with the appearance of youth and beauty and American freedoms, but underneath the cosmetics you exhibit the cruel visage of sneering tyranny.
Lip service to the Constitution is the tribute authoritarians pay to the Founding Fathers; your true fealty is to whatever hand holds the whip.
The hysterical and tragic war on American liberties waged by charlatans , time-servers, and social engineers in the name of public morality and safety is a travesty of justice, and results in the debauching of family and community life, and a collapse in respect for the institutions of government.
You so-called conservatives wrap yourselves in the clothes of righteousness and patriotism, but these stolen garments cannot hide the stench of absolutism.
Conservative! HAH!
You said in so many words that "If people stop using drugs, the WOD can end". In other words, stop doing something I dont like, and we will stop trying to confiscate your property, put you in prison and kill you. All this to stop me or others from ingesting a substance - an action that harms no one other than possibly the ingester. Being black harms no one. Evil biggots harm them for their skin color. People minding their own business are robbed and killed for their possessions. They did nothing to deserve it. Women are date raped by sick individuals. All examples are of crimes or force being used against someone who has not initiated force themselves. The War on peaceful people is the same.
I will use one. You said to stop dating men and you won't be raped, I believe. So you equate drug usage as the same thing as being female.
Like I said before, I equate date rape(initiating force) with the WOD. Just as being a woman gives no man the right to rape you, smoking pot gives no one the right to harm, inprison or kill you.
You think that you were born to use drugs. I don't like this sort of logic.
Why do you take things to the goofiest conclusions. Were you born to watch T.V. No? Then lets ban it. Were you born to drive cars. No? Ban them too. Saying a person has the natural right to do with their bodies as they please is not the same thing as saying that you should drink gasoline. You would be stupid to do it, but go ahead. If you rob me becasue you drank gas, I will punish you. I wont ban gas.
Not a single one of us alleges that our founding fathers DIDN'T use hemp for all that they could. And they also cultivated sensimillia for smokes and teas to relieve pain.
George Washington's Diary, August, 1765
Began to sow Turneps behind the Garden--the upper part of which, & down to a stake is the Norfolk Turnep. From thence to the bottom Naper Turnep. Finishd sowing Do. & a good shower fell thereon the same day. Sowed Turneps where the Drilld Wheat was, behind the Garden. These of old Seed. Finish'd Sowing Wheat at Muddy hole. Began to separate the Male from the Female hemp at Do--rather too late. Abt. 6 Oclock put some Hemp in the Rivr. to Rot. Seperated my Ewes & Rams but I believe it was full late--many of the Ewes having taken Ram. Finish'd Sowing Wheat at the Rivr. Plantn. i.e. in the corn ground. 123 Bushels it took to do it. The English Hemp i.e. the Hemp from the English Seed was pickd at Muddy hole this day & was ripe. Began to separate Hemp in the neck. Finishd Sowing Wheat in the Corn field, which lyes over the Run at the Mill 27 Bushl. Put some Hemp into the Water about 6 Oclock in the Afternoon--note this Hemp had been pulld the 8th. Instt. & was well dryed, & took it out again the 26th.
Why does our first president note the "lateness" of separating the male and female hemp? What is the purpose of timing the separation of male and female plants? POLLENATION. What is the purpose of preventing pollenation of female hemp plants? To grow sensimillia. Our first president, George Washington, used sensimillia to relieve the pain of his very poor teeth. Thomas Jefferson grew nearly 70 million hemp plants.
LibertariansThe Founding Fathers, on the other hand, in pursuit of a their own selfish agendas, decry any restraint on their endeavors, failing or refusing to see the ultimate outcome: anarchy. Libertarians Colonists are only able to see up to their fingertips, whereas conservatives Authoritarians see the "big picture." Because of that, conservatives Authoritarians are and make better public servants enforcers than do libertarians Colonists.
The first and most basic premise of this nation is that people have the right to choose to live the way they want to, within a SMALL, WELL-DEFINED set of rules (aka laws, not anarchy). Some examples that don't qualify as small and/or well-defined: the IRS code, the courtroom semantics games of lawyers, and an increasingly stringent moral code.
I do not fault Conservatives for wanting a more moral and upright nation of citizens... but I would hope that you would realize that this desire violates the primary principles of Freedom. I do not fault Libertarians for taking the argument to some logical conclusions (drugs, prostitution, etc)... but I hope that they would use these issues as points to abandon in compromise in a great national march back towards the Constitution. *Ahhhh, wishful thinking!*
Finally, please do not disparage people simply because they agree with this premise to a greater degree than yourself. You can call Conservatives "more mature" and "better" all you want, but that is merely the kind of group-think mentality that leads us towards Socialism. Make your judgements about a person's life as an individual, and not the group names that you choose to label them with.
Interesting. In your question, you let me choose anyone but the drug user to bare the responsibility. Why is that?
--Tom Petty
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