From the UK, but pertinent.
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2007/04/addicted_to_usi.html
A comment made to the above blog posting:
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2007/04/imprisonment_by.html
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2007/04/addicted_to_usi.html
Reject the message...and also the messenger
Perry de Havilland (London) UK affairs
Groups like 'Alcohol Concern' like to use the force of the state to make people act the way they want. They do not care about making an argument and convincing people to act a certain way, they want prison and truncheons to make people tow their particular highly debatable line.
Parents who give alcohol to children under the age of 15 - even with a meal at home - should face prosecution, a charity says today. Parents who let children drink should face prosecution, says Alcohol Concern. [...] A charity spokesman said: "It is legal to provide children as young as five with alcohol in a private home. Raising the age limit to 15 would send a stronger message to parents of the risks associated with letting very young people consume alcohol." It is illegal to buy a drink in a pub under 18, but a 16- or 17-year-old can drink wine or beer if having a meal with parents.
You know what I would like to see? Whenever someone threatens me with force if I do not modify my social behaviour more to their liking in my own damn home, I would like them get arrested and thrown in jail. And I would like to see them beaten with truncheons if they do not comply with the cops just like they want for others who do not comply with their wishes. Such people are addicted to using force to impose their will on others and so why not "send a stronger message" that threatening people via the political system is really no different to threatening them with violence via some other institution, like the Mafia, for example.
If 'Alcohol Concern' want to convince people that they should not allow their children to drink (which is bull****, I might add, as I suspect that encourages alcohol abuse in later life), well fine, let them take out adverts and evangelise their views like civilised members of civil society. However when they want the violence of law to impose their views, they should be regarded as anti-social thugs calling for the destruction of yet more civil society. Such people want to see society replaced with ever more politically derived formulae for personal behaviour. And of course such nonsense is unenforceable other than by family members denouncing each other a la the Communist model, which no doubt is what a group like 'Alcohol Concern' would like to see happen ... which is literally anti-social.
It is not enough to reject the message of groups like 'Alcohol Concern', people who want to impose their views on every household in the country need to be held responsible on a personal level for advocating the force backed destruction of civil society. Such people are part of the problem of modern Britain, not part of the solution.
A comment made to the above blog posting:
http://www.samizdata.net/blog/archives/2007/04/imprisonment_by.html
The problem is, they will outlaw almost everything while enforcing very little. Imprisonment by stealth. People will not know they are encircled until it is too late - like putting in all these very deep, robust fence-posts with no fence panels. All seems open. One day you will wake up and the panels are in, you are trapped and they can decide what law they wish to impose to nail whomsoever they desire.