You missed my point. Please re-read.
Sorry, I'm just trying to make up for 88GT not being here.
You missed my point. Please re-read.
Your "what about" argument of illegitimate children -- there is no law forbidding it and women are having them anyway--and we're still paying for all of the issues surrounding it. Maybe if they and their fathers had to face those consequences instead of leaving it up to the states, that probable would go away too.
I do believe, as an opinion, to not be accepting that others have opinions that differ than your own and, as long as those opinions are OWNED by that individual, it is "anti-freedom" to not be respectful to those opinions. If you are simply regurgitating talking points than you can get bent.
If you draw an imaginary line and say that "my opinions about things are the most supportive of freedom" and accuse others who, by virtue of morals, values, life experience, education, simply hold a different belief, then you become the person you say your against in the first place.
Here's the crux: many of us who frequent this forum are probably of the opinion that freedom requires no cost-benefit analysis; its value is self-evident, and needs no further justification. The problem is, voters in general absolutely do NOT agree with us about this. Freedom per-se is not a winning argument; if it was, we'd have thrown the two parties away long ago and installed Libertarians in power. We haven't. The reason is not that people _reject_ freedom; it's that they're afraid it can't be made to work; that too much of it, implemented in too-unconsidered a fashion, will actually make society a _worse_ place to live. They see their neighbors, and they just don't trust them. (Thank heavens for the Second Amendment; if not for that, I suspect guns, put to a vote of citizens, would have been gone long ago).
Here's the crux: many of us who frequent this forum are probably of the opinion that freedom requires no cost-benefit analysis; its value is self-evident, and needs no further justification. The problem is, voters in general absolutely do NOT agree with us about this. Freedom per-se is not a winning argument; if it was, we'd have thrown the two parties away long ago and installed Libertarians in power. We haven't. The reason is not that people _reject_ freedom; it's that they're afraid it can't be made to work; that too much of it, implemented in too-unconsidered a fashion, will actually make society a _worse_ place to live. They see their neighbors, and they just don't trust them. (Thank heavens for the Second Amendment; if not for that, I suspect guns, put to a vote of citizens, would have been gone long ago).
Ram & Steve, here is your adversary, summarized in a nutshell: "If I have to stay drug-free as a condition of employment, I'll be G*d-damned if I'm going to pay for someone else to take the stuff while being supported by me." If you cannot address that - you lose. If your only response is, "you're already supporting blah-blah-blah," you lose. Because the citizen is fed up and wants no part of anything that has any chance of increasing the problem, even if it is advanced under the banner of Liberty. They increasingly see society as "Liberty for deadbeats - slavery for the rest of us working hacks." And they're sick and tired of it, and aren't having it. "You and your little drug-freedom First World Problems can go hang," they say.
...I also agree that this is the viewpoint that I am fighting against. It is as irrational and emotional as Gun Control arguments. People are pissed off at having to support deadbeats and I don't blame them. I imagine that they achieve some sort of emotional satisfaction by seeing one of these deadbeats rot in prison, even if it means a higher tax bill for themselves and a violent tyrannical police-state for their children.
People are welcome to support this sort of policy to gain this emotional satisfaction. Their vote counts just as much as mine. But I want to make it clear that this satisfaction is gained at the expense of liberty. Make your choice, but if you're willing to sacrifice liberty for it then you need to own that position.
The case that legalization will reduce social costs cannot just be asserted; it needs to be fleshed-out and have the details and evidence filled in convincingly. It seems logical to people that legalizing it will encourage more people to do it, and that collecting taxes off it will be "Military Complex - Part 2," and that the addiction counseling of these additional people will be "Great Society - Part 3," and on, and on, and on-and-on-and-on-and-on.
We got to see how things like Romneycare worked out in Massachusetts. Let's see how places like Colorado do with the "soft" drugs. I have a feeling one way or the other, evidence will be forthcoming.
"the death rate from poisoned liquor was appallingly high throughout the country. In 1925 the national toll was 4,154 as compared to 1,064 in 1920. And the increasing number of deaths created a public relations problem for . . . the drys because they weren't exactly accidental."
Prohibition also led many people to drink more "legitimate" alcohol, such as patent medicines (which contained high concentrations of alcohol), medicinal alcohol, and sacramental alcohol.[SUP][21][/SUP] The amount of alcoholic liquors sold by physicians and hospitals doubled between 1923 and 1931. The amount of medicinal alcohol (95 percent pure alcohol) sold increased by 400 percent during the same time.[SUP][22][/SUP] Those increases occurred despite rigorous new regulations.
Prohibition not only created the Bureau of Prohibition, it gave rise to a dramatic increase in the size and power of other government agencies as well. Between 1920 and 1930 employment at the Customs Service increased 45 percent, and the service's annual budget increased 123 percent. Personnel of the Coast Guard increased 188 percent during the 1920s, and its budget increased more than 500 percent between 1915 and 1932.
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This is a very strange, irrational, and emotionally-charged argument.
I think for a good portion of the pro drug war crowd, it's less about the war on drugs than it is the war on those they associate with drugs.
I think it's silly to keep calling it a war when it's clearly not
I think it's silly to keep calling it a war when it's clearly not
Ask the people in South America if it's not a war that we've been fighting. Ask the Coast Guard and US Navy who've been involved in it. Ask the families of people killed in Mexico by the cartels if it's not a war. And ask the families of cops who've been killed fighting this non-existent war if it's a war.
I think for a good portion of the pro drug war crowd, it's less about the war on drugs than it is the war on those they associate with drugs.
Issues of emotion, liberty, and taxes are present in every political discussion. The problem here is that your countrymen don't seem to think your Prohibition argument is game-set-match. They seem to think we're talking about something more dangerous, they seem to think the times are different, they seem to think peoples underlying values and moral character are different, and they seem to think the prevalence of the Welfare State is very different...all of which make this issue, well, different.
Prohibition didn't work because "everybody" kept drinking anyway. Political elites and common man alike enjoyed a drink or a visit to a "speak easy." The effects of alcohol and marijuana on the majority of the population are short in duration and are of limited long term effect.
There are no "casual" crack users. There aren't "social" heroin users. Speakeasy's looked like fun, pretty sure nobody has fun at a crack house. The link between meth, crack, heroin, and the deviance that follows is not even in the same galaxy as that of alcohol and marijuana.
The drugs that you're so scared of are a result of the drug war. They will go the way of ****-poor moonshine if we drop this drug war.
How will they go away if you legalize them? Are you saying the crack will be safer?