How free can we really be?

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Some scattered thoughts:


"God given rights" = "endowed by our Creator" = "natural rights" = "rights inherent in our existence".

It's all the same, pick whatever formulation you like the best or which least offends your sensibilities. Your rights are not dependent on your understanding of, and relationship to the Infinite.

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Can people use hard drugs responsibly?

Sure. Morphine's about as hard a drug as it gets. It's dangerous, in that its dose of effectiveness is close to its lethal dose, and it's addictive as all get out. Nonetheless, it's used responsibly every day, all over the world for pain management.

Oh, wait. You meant, "can people use hard drugs responsibly for _entertainment_ purposes?"

As a theoretical and ideological matter, I'd _want_ to say "yes", but as a practical matter based on what I've seen over my lifetime, I gotta say "not generally, no." I'll make the theoretical allowance for the occassional user who somehow manages to not destroy his own life and the lives of those around him, but the real world just doesn't offer us to many examples of such. In fact, the very definition of "hard" drugs begs the question, as to a large degree, by "hard" drugs, we mean those drugs whose nature is such that they are NOT likely to be used responsibly for trivial purposes.


That being said, the real question is, "given that the preponderance of the evidence indicates that hard drug use is destructive in the vast majority of cases, ought we to outlaw it?"

AHA! Now THAT is an interesting question. With THAT formulation of the question, we are not obliged to defend hard drugs or their self destructive users. It frees us to contemplate the question on another level, to ask yourselves what the best public policy is for a free society. Should a free society attempt to "legislate morality" by prohibiting all behavior that is dangerous or destructive?

The answer there is "No, a free society should not, lest it lose its character as a FREE society."

For starters, not _all_ behaviors a society deems dangerous or destructive actually are, and by accepting the axiom that a society can and ought to prohibit such behaviors, you set the precedent, without setting the limit of where it stops.

Where does it stop?

There's a lot of expansion and elucidation around the formulation that formulation of the question that I wish I had time for.

It's not about drugs. It's about freedom in a free society.

It's about how our society strikes the balance between freedom and safety.
 
It's those occasional, "god given right", comments (among others, I guess) that I see that make me wonder though...
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I'm not sure I understand. It sounds like you are making the assumption that recognizing a Creator and believing that He created humans to live free, with certain inalienable rights, is somehow disqualifying for libertarianism.

I'm not really one to argue over specific flavors and genres of political affiliation labels...but people tell me that my views are pretty much pure libertarian. How about that, and I acknowledge God as the source and author of life.

I'm not seeing the contradiction.

I believe God gave me my life. That makes it mine. It also makes me recognize that he gave YOU your life.

Isn't ownership of one's self the bedrock of libertarianism?
 
My point is, almost no one supports liberty across the board. Where are the ALL liberty supporters?
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Look over this way ... my hand is up in the air! :D


I don't look at politics as left-center-right, rather I see it as a big letter Y

The typical Democrat/left viewpoint is the left fork at the top, and the typical Republican/right viewpoint is the right fork at the top. Both are statist and proponents of big governmment, and generally pro-war, at least when they are in office. The only difference is that they each seek to allow or prohibit different specific things.

My viewpoint, on the other hand, is the "stem" of the Y pointing straight down and nearly 180 degrees from either the left or right. In other words, favoring little or no government at all, you are responsible for your own behavior/welfare, and you can own/do anything you want as long as you don't harm others.
 
Well, there's more than one kind of person. We're trying to have a country here, but it's hard because there are a lot of, well, suboptimal people we've got to deal with. Guns are categorically different from drugs. There is no use of drugs like heroin by the desirable people. Banning herion, cocaine, and crack is inconvenient only to the undesirables. Banning guns, on the other hand, would be injurious to a lot of the desirables.

When you make heroin et al contraband, you increase its price and create a career field for smugglers and allied criminals (i.e. you create a category of crime that has the undesirables shooting at each other). If you legalize these drugs, there's less reason for the undesirables to shoot at each other, but you increase availability and usage and have an increase in the number of crimes and other incidents that occur under the influence of these drugs. You also expand the user base.

Consider alcohol, undoubtedly the drug most commonly abused by the undesirables. Why so? It's legal. The number of serious crimes to which alcohol is a contributor is astronomical. Legalizing herion and other drugs would only multiply these problems.
 
I probably should have said something to the effect of:

Own guns and bullets vs. own currently illegal drugs and drug paraphernalia
Use guns and bullets vs. use currently illegal drugs and drug paraphernalia

The original post was getting long as it was though and I think most of you saw my point anyway. :D

What made me wonder with the “god given right” comments is that typically when people use a phrase like that they are religious. Typically religious people have problems with certain social behaviors or choices even if it doesn’t affect them directly and it sways from a libertarian view. It’s not always the case, obviously, but I was curious how free people here think we can really be. I agree with a lot of the sentiments already made. I don’t like a big nanny-like government that is responsible for our entire well-being, but then I have to consider the data… The people that I see every day that do irresponsible and dangerous things. It does make me wonder.

I didn’t think to include this in the original post either (focusing on other things and trying to keep it short for the A.D.D. folks like me! :D ) but I think one thing that would help tremendously would be a better education system. If people were educated on the kinds of things that happen chemically in their bodies when they use drugs, more people might not use them even if they were legal and readily accessible. The same goes for guns. If people were educated in their use and effectiveness, maybe they would be less likely to use them irresponsibly. The list goes on, I suppose, but that’s a general idea anyway.
 
bouis

the government has made itself responsible for taking care of people who can't take care of themselves, and so the cost of letting people destroy their own lives is tremendous. This also has the side effect of rewarding or subsidizing self-destructive behavior when the system removes the natural consequences of bad decisions.
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You got that right. When drugs are legalized, Medicaid should be abolished with it. You choose to screw up your life, you can pay your own medical bills. :cuss:
 
Yardstick: People are educated on what goes in their body through drug use. Or at least they were when I was in school. The D.A.R.E. program infroms many students about drugs. The truth is that is that most people will give in to peer pressure. Young people especially. Its easy to say drugs are bad. However we also have to understand that drugs are fun. I wont lie about it. If drugs did not feel good and were not fun people would not use them.

However we have to teach kids responsibility more importantly. That seems to be the real issue. Kids will experiment no matter what so why not teach them responsibility first and foremost. Ask yourselves if you ever smoked a joint in high school, had a few beers with your friends when it was illegal for you to, or tried other drugs before you decided it was not for you? Most of you are probably normal adults and are not dependent on any chemicals. However I am sure there are a few people who are dependent on chemicals on this board as well. In the end it is ultimately up to the user and not the rest of society to make that change for them.
 
The biggest problem with this debate (and it is always the case with the drug issue, or prostitution or whatever social ill some people want to legislate away) is that those who support the prohibition of X can't get past the idea that if one opposes said prohibition of X then they must support the widespread use of X.


I don't like pot, I smoked a bit in high school and college and never really liked it. If it was legal and free I wouldn't smoke it (frankly it was its illegality that got me to try it more than once). Same thing goes for Meth, Cocaine, Heroin and White Zinfandel (Zinfandel is a RED dammit, and you're not going to convince me otherwise).

The point is that I don't think its useful to spend copious amounts of tax dollars and sacrifice the basic liberties that our country was built on to keep some idiots from smoking pot or snorting Meth. If under the influence of said drugs these idiots do something wrong than fine, throw the book at them (same thing goes for if they are drinking or stone cold sober too).

Ultimately there is a cost/benefit analysis and the war on drugs has become more of a liability than the use of drugs (which it doesn't seem to be cutting down on anyway).


I would rather live in a free America where I can carry my CCW piece on an airplane without any sort of permission from mama government but my neighbor could buy Cocaine at Walgreen's than our current police state.


Its just always vexed me that freedom loving people can look at what happened when we instituted prohibition of alcohol yet still think that not only is drug prohibition a good idea but its vitally necessary. :confused:
 
Quote:
...I've noticed a slight shift from a more republican/right wing political stance when I first signed up to a more libertarian political stance. Maybe it's just that there are more people from that camp joining here.


Nope. It's that more and more of us are growing up intellectually and morally.
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This explains my leaving the GOP.......
 
Those who wish to ban drugs to protect people from their own lack of discipline, resistance to temptation, etc., why not ban Warcraft?

Based on the same criteria, we should have a Warcraft Enforcement Agency, and a War on Warcraft, with lots of no-knock forced entries by SWAT at 2am.

"From my vantage point as a guild decision maker, I've seen it destroy more families and friendships and take a huge toll on individuals than any drug on the market today, and that means a lot coming from an ex-club DJ. It took a huge personal toll on me. To illustrate the impact it had, let's look at me one year later. When I started playing, I was working towards getting into the best shape of my life (and making good progress, too). Now a year later, I'm about 30 pounds heavier that I was back then, and it is not muscle. I had a lot of hobbies including DJing (which I was pretty accomplished at) and music as well as writing and martial arts. I haven't touched a record or my guitar for over a year and I think if I tried any Kung Fu my gut would throw my back out."
http://instapundit.com/archives/033331.php
 
Banning drugs does not serve to protect people from themselves. It serves to protect us from them. They can pay high black market prices, inject themselves with counterfeit or adulterated drugs, and wind up in prison or dead. Those are essentially the breaks.


The ban is intended to limit the user base and to a lesser extent to reduce availability.


The comparison to Prohibition is important but typically misunderstood. Even Bill Buckley doesn't get this one. Our experience with attempting to ban alcohol shows that once a drug has a large enough user base, banning it becomes impractical. Alcohol is an extremely problematic drug in America, but banning it hasn't worked because too many people already use it. Other drugs that have been contraband for a long time still have restricted user bases. If they were legalized, the number of users would increase and they might well become as harmful overall as alcohol or even worse. But if the user base had become large by that time, reversing the legalization might be unworkable. In short, for specific drugs, once the cat is out of the bag, getting him back in there is either difficult or impossible. As big of a problem as alcohol is, we can't get that cat into the bag. Letting heroin (!) or other presently banned drugs out of the bag would be lunacy.
 
But if the user base had become large by that time, reversing the legalization might be unworkable.
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And you think the current War on Drugs is "workable"...? :eek:


Actually, I believe the reverse is true - that the WOD has created some demons which won't all go away even if drugs were legalized (just as organized crime has continued decades after Prohibition ended). :(

That, and some substances like crack and meth might never have come about if the more organic drugs had been legal.
 
TallPine:

Every solution is imperfect. But it's still preferable to the problem. Legal drugs are a problem for everybody. Alcohol should make this obvious. Multiply that by 1000 by legalizing marijuana, cocaine, heroin, and crack. Then try to change your mind and find out that the cat won't go back in the bag. That's the outcome drug legalization would produce.
 
History ?

Just as Prohibition gave us organized crime, and a need for gun control. The first gun control was a tax, to fight the criminals that Prohibition created. When all these drugs were legal, there was some abuse, but no real problem. Making them illegal created a blackmarket. Blackmarket makes criminals big money. Legal drugs=no blackmarket=no high profit.
 
We're now endangered species :eek:. I expected a little more Libertarians here too, but i guess not. The Conservatives/Republicans have way more power than we do.
 
Alcohol is an extremely problematic drug in America, but banning it hasn't worked because too many people already use it.
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Eh...come again?

Banning alcohol worked as well as any prohibition could be expected to work. It reduced the user base, but made that user base far more hard-core about their usage.

Being legal, mild & responsible enjoyment of alcohol is easy, relaxed, and trouble-free (for most).
When illegal, anyone imbibing the liquid might as well get completely shnockered.

When the law cares little about how far over the line you've gone, people tend to go WAY over the line just to match the risked cost.

Its as I observed in another thread: silencers cost so much because the tax is so high - if you're going to pay a $200 tax, you might as well go for the $800 silencer instead of the $50 one. Likewise, the demand for flash suppressors went thru the roof (despite them having no practical value for most buyers) simply because the "assault weapon ban" practically prohibited them. Likewise, people took great risk to drink alcohol during Prohibition because the ban jacked up the intensity, desire, and risk for doing so.
 
The first response has to go to the original poster. The religious reference you should check is Luke 22-36,,,, the context is Jesus telling his diciples to arm themselves for the troubles to follow his death. if I recall the correct quote, it is "If a man hath not a sword, he should take his purse, and buy one, and if he has no purse he should trade his cloak for one" (in this context a cloak is his symbol of status in the community).

As for most of the following answers, I do not want the government in control. I want every man to be free. If he wants to kill himself with drugs, it is his choice. If he wants to own guns, it is his choice. If he wants to drink too much (as I do), that should be my choice.

The phrase that your right to swing your fist ends before it gets to my nose is the one I want our government to enforce. I do not want you to control me, and I do not want to control you,,,, BUT i do understand that sometimes some people will need to be stopped, and I want to be able to go my way in peace with no problems. From the criminals, or the government, or my poor neighbor that is not sure that my gun will not jump out of my holster and start shooting, all by itself, that is why the founding fathers wrote my signature line, and made it simple, and clear to all.
 
Harm none.

But remember that "none" includes yourself.

"And these eight words of The Rede ye fulfill:
An ye harm none, do as ye will."
 
Legal drugs are a problem for everybody. Alcohol should make this obvious.
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You mean like:

* liquor store owners having shoot outs with their competition ?

* liqour dealers hanging around on street corners near schools ?

* gangs and organized crime making big profits off of dealing in liquor ?

* SWAT teams breaking into houses because someone reported that the residents might have a bottle of beer ?

* houses catching on fire because of home whiskey stills ?

* laws against purchase of anything but very small quantities of corn and other produce that might be used to make illegal alcohol ?

etc ...........

Funny, I hadn't noticed :neener:



The problem is that I have already changed my mind, because I used to be adamantly opposed to legalization of "drugs" ;)
 
No. I mean 20,000 people killed on the road every year by drunk drivers; an unguessably huge number of crimes committed under the influence of alchohol; pervasive, massive social, medical, and economic costs associated with alcohol use. Banning herion and other drugs does in fact directly produce smuggling, black market distribution, and gang warfare. True enough. These have a miniscule effect on good people. The legalization of drugs would rapidly demonstrate to everyone's satisfaction the fact that such legalization creates a different and much worse kind of problem. By the time that demonstration was complete, though, it would likely be too late to reverse the process of legaliztion.
 
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