mvanwink5 wrote:
D, my issue with the war on drugs is twofold, it criminalizes users destroying their lives and criminalizes their supply chain, and thusly funds a massive criminal industry. That in itself is catastrophic and expensive. Second is more fundamental, it establishes that people don't own themselves, and then that begs the question of who does? The answer to that question is the truly big disaster.
Your points are overly simplistic. I have come to view much of society as a series of functions one imposed on the top of another, and I have found that broad statements (funds a massive industry, people don't own themselves) are only accurate between specific points on a function curve.
My arguments are complex, and I find myself often at a loss as to how to articulate them in a way that others can understand them. Let us take for example, your point that people own themselves.
This point is mostly true, but partially false. It depends on what you mean by "own" and in what context.
Does a Father "own" the right to let his kids starve? (because he does not want to use his body to support them.) Does a pregnant mother have the right to take drugs because she owns her body? (Recent court cases say no, that's child abuse.)
Does a soldier own his body? Can he decide where it goes, or what it does or what he puts in it?
How about Nurse Hickox refusing to adhere to quarantine rules? Is she entitled to go wherever she pleases even if she had been infected with Ebola?
Perhaps you see it differently, but I see limits to the argument that people own their own bodies. Mostly yes, but completely? I don't see how such a principle can be reconciled with the larger social picture. Membership in a society compels certain restraints as well as advantages. Those who refuse to abide by these restraints (like Ebola Nurse Kaci Hickox) are rightfully a danger to the rest of society, which also has rights.
As Edmund Burke put it:
Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, — in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, — in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, — in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.
mvanwink5 wrote: However, if you take paperburn1's point, which is also msimon's point also, you pick your key issue and vote on it, with the hope that once that issue is breached that the next issue can be addressed without losing ground.
With this I concur. I do not consider the drug issue to be even in my top twenty issues of which we should be particularly concerned. Though I think it is wrong headed and foolish, I wouldn't regard it as a deal breaker if some politician were in favor of legalizing pot. Of far more pressing concern is Fiscal Sanity, Border Control, and Government reform. (Whittling it back down to a proper size.)
mvanwink5 wrote: I am unsure this works in real life as it hasn't so far. But, my rope's end is that any vote for a Progressive is a devil's deal, and that deal has been the only one offered by what has become the Rhino party.
Hence, I've come to my ropes end and my vote rebellion.
I too am sick of Rinos, and I have written quite a lot urging people (on another forum) to chop off the heads of two in particular. (to no avail.) Mitch McConnell and Thad Cochran needed to have been defeated and replaced with Democrats to send a proper message to the Rino GOPe (establishment) that business as usual would not be acceptable, but other people, failing to grasp the wisdom of this approach, saw fit to put these worse than Democrats back in office.
As for rebellion, what have you got in mind? I already try to wage financial rebellion against the left. I make a point to buy as few of their products as I can, and I am always looking for any other suggestions as to how we can take the battle to them.
), 'insurance,' Banksters, etc, etc. Regulations, contracts, and direct subsidies (not talking about tax loopholes here) is where the corporate cronies get their sweetheart deals. Everyone else gets the other end of the special political favor shaft.