2010:warmest year ever since records began

[KitemanSA]

Driving under the influence is a felony. Injuring someone while doing it is a crime. See the difference?

Driving under the influence is a crime whether you injure someone or not. This concept relies on the principle that you have recklessly endangered others, and it is only through luck that none of them were injured. Merely putting people at threat, is a crime. Not just actually injuring them.

Perhaps we will have to agree to disagree on this one for a while.

Your gun puts me in danger so by your argument you should be criminally prosecuted for owning a gun. I don't agree with you on that.

I would try to sooth this disagreement by noting that it is damned near impossible to be driving under the influence without outward and specific actions that involve others involuntarily. So the simple fact that someone is driving under the influence is not a crime, but the weaving and other such behavour that almost always goes along with it is.

So my point is it is the involuntary interACTION that is the crime, not the condition that might create it.

[KitemanSA]

Your mantra, grasshopper is "People have the right to voluntary Action. Therefore it is wrong to involve someone in an action involuntarily... ohmmm". Say that to yourself each night for 15 minutes before you sleep. When you understand it, let me know and I will provide your next mantra!

Master Po was blind too!

Master Po was blind, the grasshopper could not see. Open your inner eye grasshopper!

[KitemanSA]

It is no more a right than firing a gun up in the air without regard to where the bullets are coming down. You can say "I didn't mean to do that!" all you want, but the behavior engenders bad results by it's nature.

Yup, but if you are out in the middle of the Pacific and you can see that there is noone anywhere around, is firing your gun straight up a CRIMINAL act? It may be stupid, but not criminal. Doing it in a city becomes criminal to the degree it involves others involuntarily (e.g., comes down thru their roof without permission).

I agree, and now our analogies match exactly. Someone who cannot victimize anyone else, by accident or intent, can do whatever they want. So if you agree that addicts can be moved out of society, before they have children to hurt, then I see no objections to them becoming a full time lotus eater.

I understnd the word "victimize" to mean involving someone in a harmful action involuntarily. If they volunteer, they are not victims, they are participants. If that is your meaning, then I agree with most of your first statement. We may have a slight disagreement with the "accident" part. I mean, if a parent is caring for his child in a positive manner while under the influence, and a car come thru the wall and harms the child, that is an accident, but hardly the parent involving the child in it. With that caveat, we are approaching an agreement.

[KitemanSA]

How do guns infringe on others rights? Give me an example of this so I can understand what you are attempting to say.

Can I shoot you right now and not infringe on your rights?

Yes, you can shoot me now and not violate my rights if I volunteer for you to do so.

What if I shoot your dog or a relative, ...

My dog, yes, if I volunteer. My relative, only if tse volunteers. (Tse, "That sapient entity", a proposed gender/species neutral pronoun).

[Diogenes]

D,

You really ought to go back and look at your history. What you think of as Conservatism is really a leftover of the Conservative/Progressive alliance of the early 1900s. .

You have repeated that countless times. You point to what you regard as similarities as proof that they are the same. As the "English Patient" said in the movie When asked (by a man who thinks he might be a German spy) if he was married : "l think so. Although l believe that to be true of a number of Germans.'

We eat, we drink, we sleep, but that does not mean we have the same philosophy.

The closet thing we have to real American conservatism these days is what you refer to disparagingly as "libertarianism".

Do some research. Compare the positions of conservatism from around 1900 to current libertarianism. There is probably way more congruence than you are comfortable with.

I read that Gacy loved dogs and children. Am I to conclude that all lovers of dogs and children are the same?

When given a choice between a communist and a progressive conservative in an American election I went with the communist. A little C.S. Lewis explains my attitude:

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. Clive Staples "CS" Lewis

Why, that's such a clever turn of phrase it MUST be true!

Mr. Lewis was an old style conservative in the American tradition. Even if he wasn't an American.

I think you mean he appears to agree with you, and so therefore he's good.

I prefer the philosophy of Edmund Burke: (Who is often regarded as the Father of conservative thought.*)

"On all behavior there must be a controlling influence... The less that comes from within, the more must come from without. "




*

The thesis of this essay is that Burke’s implicit political creed is, in all essential respects, the doctrine articulated by the twentieth-century social philosopher F. A. Hayek.

Both Burke and his descendant Hayek were leery of the untutored and unsocial impulses that lie beneath man’s acquired civility; and each endeavored to refute all doctrines that undermined the authority of those "repressive or inhibitory"19 social rules that alone enable men to live together in any degree of freedom or peace.

http://www.nhinet.org/raeder.htm

[zapkitty]

What if I shoot your dog or a relative, ...

My dog, yes, if I volunteer. My relative, only if tse volunteers. (Tse, "That sapient entity", an proposed gender/species neutral pronoun).

While gender-reliance does cause real and demonstrable communications problems for the language... that particular solution is frickin' lame.

For one thing, if the example you give involved myself instead then the proposed neologism wouldn't take into account several of my relatives who don't seem to be sapient...

[Diogenes]

The right of arms is for the purpose of the innocent harming the guilty.

Sure, just like the right to have a beer isn't the right to drive drunk. The purpose is for people to enjoy their beer, not endanger others. Other drugs are no different.

If a beer is like a gun, then marijuana is like a shotgun, cocaine is like a RPG, Meth is like a 500 lb bomb, and heroine is like a fuel air burst.

Your analogy cannot regard all drugs as having equal scale. I didn't even mention LSD and PCP, which are like a fully firing phalanx gun system with a malfunctioning control system.

If you think drugs harm no one but those who harm themselves, you need to spend more time with addicts. You'll find out who gets harmed

It certainly doesn't directly harm anyone else. But guns are no different in terms of indirect harm -- if you shoot an armed robber, you may be depriving innocent children of their father. Both are the price of freedom.

It is the unavoidable consequence of defending one's own life. When the two consequences are weighed, the balance of justice will be on the side of the shooter. This is another example where it is dishonest to claim an intent which did not exist, though the consequences be the same.

Once the pusher uses it on his victim, the victim has been injured.

Nonsense. Alcohol companies don't injure me by selling me beer -- even if I'm an alcoholic.

You are attempting to mitigate the damage of the most dangerous drugs by pointing at the damage of the lesser drugs.

YOUR philosophy counts them as equal, so it is dishonest of you to use the most benign (which it really isn't) to justify the most destructive.

Why don't you man up and tackle this question head on? Explain how someone is not injured by being introduced to PCP, Crack, Heroine, LSD, etc.

Have you tried any of it? After all, if it causes you no injury, why shouldn't you try it?

If you think people addicted to drugs are in their right mind, you are simply not comprehending the situation.

If you think the best solution is to take the thing their poor addled brains tell them they REALLY REALLY NEED RIGHT NOW!!! and make it both illegal and expensive, then you haven't thought your policy through. Most addicts can function pretty well if they aren't constantly thrust up against the time horizon of their next fix and how to pay for it.

Are you reading your information? I assure you real world data collection works much better. I've known addicts that didn't have a problem getting their drugs. From the bum in Denver (who smokes pot) to Crack, Meth, and Heroine addicts. They don't function worth a shit! Now you might argue that they would have been worthless people had they not been on drugs, but the young man in Denver has a family which works hard and makes prudent decisions. Others come from likewise consequential families. Their siblings who avoid drugs are productive, and have disdain for their drug addicted siblings.

The solution isn't to take away their drugs after they are addicted, it's to prevent them from ever getting addicted in the first place! Making it easier is simply going the wrong direction.

(Mike Gray's Drug Crazy has a great analogy for our drug policy -- imagine the gov't has made food illegal, so now a hot dog costs $200 and you have to go through criminals to get it, and you'll have some idea of what life is like for addicts).

Food? Why not Air? If we're going to be silly beyond any rationality, why not shoot for the moon?

Food is essential for life. Drugs are not. People who have never been exposed to them can go 10,000 days or more without any need for them.
How can they be analogous to food? I would suggest someone had to be smoking what they are trying to justify to think that analogy is even remotely defenseable.

The items you mention are in the same direction as drugs, the difference is in their efficacy. The levels of effect are dramatically different from drugs.

Addiction is in the eye of the addict.

The "Eye" you say? I thought it was in the cellular binding sites of the nervous system.

You know, when they test substances on rats, they use a lot of different rats, because people long ago figured out that not all substances affect all organisms in the same way, so they have to figure out what the most common reaction is, and what percentage of rats it affects.

They establish a threshold, and decide if it's higher than this, it's too much. If it's lower than this, it's tolerable. What this argument boils down to is where in societies best interest should we set that threshold?

It just appears from your perspective that the logic is contorted.

No, it's objectively contorted. It's always more difficult to explain why the legality of dangerous A is totally different than the legality of dangerous B than it is to say A & B are both dangerous items that should be treated similarly. That's not to say such distinctions are always ipso facto wrong, but one learns to be wary of them in this context --i.e., you always need a damned good reason to infringe on people's liberties, because the consequences of limiting liberties are so harmful to notions of a free society.

The problem with your point of view is that you regard this as a "Liberty", when in fact it is not. It is the chemical tampering of the control system of the human mind. Once an addict is hooked, they cannot exercise free will. You might as well wire their brain to a computer whereby you could control them like a puppet, and declare them to be exercising "Free Will."

If someone grabbed you, and gave you daily injections of heroine for a few weeks or months, you would be jonesing for your next fix. You would then claim it was your will and desire to get that next fix, but no sensible person would believe you. Free will can only be exercised with an understanding of the consequences. Tricking a person to sign a contract obviates the contract's validity, in my opinion.

I never expect statists to understand this, because they don't think so much as they emote, and they hardly understand the value of liberty at all. Conservatives, on the other hand, should really know better.

I am not a "statist", nor am I an anarchist. I am quite annoyed that I find myself in the position of having to defend the government because they are doing one of their mandated tasks. My preference is to castigate them for doing things outside of their mandate.

[Diogenes]

I never expect statists to understand this, because they don't think so much as they emote, and they hardly understand the value of liberty at all. Conservatives, on the other hand, should really know better.

Exactly.

When feelings get promoted over reason and are enacted into law the result is bad government.

The corollary is that when feelings get promoted over reason and are used to overturn law, the result is bad society.

Conservatives excoriate liberals for their lack of reason and then go on to do exactly the same thing. And then when things go bad the defense is "My intent is good and only good. The bad results you see can't possibly be my fault because I didn't intend them."

Except for the difference. You keep misstating the reasoning, and trying to paint it as the same thing that the liberals are doing. You are either unable to comprehend the reasoning, or you are unable to accept it.

You need to read some Burke.

[Diogenes]

Quote:
Bad ideas must die in a free marketplace, not beneath a gov't jackboot.
...
Like predatory business practices. Oh, wait, those didn't die in the free marketplace, they were gaining strength when the Government took steps to stop them. (Sherman Anti-trust act)

This is a common confusion about what a "free marketplace" means. A free marketplace is not one in which businesses are allowed to form monopolies or inflict external costs on people at will. To libertarians, corporatism is nearly as great a threat to free markets as statism (Milton Friedman discusses this at length in a couple of his books. And you can see the wages of corporatism in the stagnation of Western Europe, in which every country tries to protect "their" company, with the result that the biggest companies in Europe today are more or less the same list as 30 years ago -- no Microsoft, no Google, no Amazon...)

One question. Who prevents the hijacking of the free market?

Racism, otoh, is more in the line of a bad idea than a subversion of free market princples. If someone practices economic racism, then society should enforce consequences by consensual action: boycott, ostracism, denunciation.

The line between society and government is ephemeral. The two work in tandem. The government changes to reflect the will of society, and society changes to reflect the will of the government. It is a mutually driven feedback system.

To think the two are completely separate is to conceive another one of those false boundaries that I often rail about.

[Diogenes]

And then when things go bad the defense is "My intent is good and only good. The bad results you see can't possibly be my fault because I didn't intend them."

And they never seem to hear the echoes of Communist supporters in those words.

That's because these accusations are just false mockery, and do not resemble the motivation or the results of conservative thought.

It's funny, they understand this idea perfectly as applied to economic policy, but applying it to social policy seems to be their big blind spot.

The bigger blind spot is the belief that the two things are separate and unconnected.

You can see a tacit acknowledgment of this problem from some of the better conservative writers, like Mona Charen and Ann Coulter, who rarely attempt a coherent argument on behalf of such ideas. I think a lot of them are coming around to classical liberalism.

That's one explanation. Another could be that the continuous onslaught against them regarding the "social issues" is finally paying dividends for the attackers.

My thinking is that reality asserts itself regardless of philosophy or opinion. Now it is also my thinking that violation of the natural laws will have their own consequences (like Adam Smith's invisible hand) and so evolution will correct the problem eventually, but as the problem is bad memes, then it seems unfair to me that otherwise healthy people should be destroyed for the sake of malignant memes.


YMMV

[Diogenes]

An example, just for kicks. Children do not have the right to vote. Should a child attempt to do so, he is just shewed away.

Actually, no one has the right to vote. They have a legal franchize or not. Remember, I recognize that "Right" and "Wrong" are moral absolutes. If it is not right, it is wrong. And what defines the distinction is the fact that people (sapient beings if you want to get inclusive) have the right to voluntary action. Period.

Now I will watch as you sputter and huff and bring up arguements ethical and legal.

I like your use of the term "Sapient". It refers to the possession of sapience: "the ability of an organism or entity to act with judgment."

Love it!


In the movie "Ridicule" (excellent french movie) the main character (Le Marquis Grégoire Ponceludon de Malavoy) is put into a contest with a table full of other people and they are all challenged to be witty before the soup arrives. (Because there are 13, (un unlucky number) The loser must leave the table without being served.) Unbeknownst to him, the beautiful Madame de Blayac (his lover) starts paying footsie with his crotch. (because she is trying to prevent him from winning.) Needless to say, the man cannot concentrate because his judgment is being interfered with. When it comes his turn, he does poorly, and is ejected from the group.
He is told he must eat with the servants, to which another noble comments, "monsieur, one is known by the company he keeps." to which he responded, "Not at all. Judas kept excellent company. "


The point being, you cannot claim judgment when you are unable to exercise it. Taking substances which tamper with your judgment renders it inoperative.


Another example. Ordinary rats will not stay in one place and push a button till they die. Install a wire into their brain's pleasure center, wire it to the button, let them see that pushing the button gives them pleasure, and many rats will push the button till they die.

Are you to claim they are exercising judgment?




p.s. Did you enjoy my sputtering and huffing? I know I did!

[Diogenes]

What adverse effects could possibly affect a child, but not an adult? Dosage? Adults can overdose too.

Let me try one more time. The distinction is on the one hand, an adult doing something to himself (vice) or an adult doing to someone else involuntarily (crime).

And both are like children in their understanding of what they are tampering with.

[Diogenes]

Cannabis IS a drug. It is a relatively benign drug, especially when compared to alcohol. (so far as I have determined) However, you are defending the philosophy that ALL drugs should be legal and freely available. That is a bridge too far.

Crack, Meth, Heroine, LSD, PCP, etc. are killers and destroyers.

To agree that a person has a right to do anything to themselves is to agree they have a right to use these substances, and it is simply impossible in my mind to separate the use of these substances from damage to everyone around the user.

These drugs are by their nature, too dangerous and destructive to allow anyone to use, and they need to be treated like the dangerous substances which they are.

Sorry dude, but LSD isn't a "killer and destroyer". It's a VERY useful drug, very illuminating, and from my experience, zero side effects. That said, when you market rat poison as LSD, then rat poison is a killer and destroyer, but, that doesn't make it LSD. I've tripped on LSD a number of times quite safely, and had no ill effects as a result. It's super fantastic to use when you are meditating, helps to achieve nirvana-like states quite nicely.

I will accept at face value what you tell me is your own experience with LSD. This provokes two points though.

1. Does it have such a benign effect on the vast majority of the population, or is it indeed very harmful to some?
2. You have not addressed the other substances mentioned.

That said, the primary false argument here about legalizing so-called "hard" drugs is that by legalizing them for adults, that this will immediately trigger an epidemic of abuse by minors.

Actually, I believe it will produce a series of detrimental results of which an "epidemic of abuse by minors" is just one of the possible consequences. The other consequences are likely to be just as wide in scope and scale.

Dude, those drugs are ALREADY being abused by minors. The problem is that they are not being regulated for quality (harm to users usually is the result of poor quality control, not from the pure drugs themselves) and they are not being taxed to pay for such negative externalities as underage abuse. When you legalize it, you then can regulate who is using it, who is making it, who is distributing and administering it (so you then get to eliminate all the drug gangs, their related crime, as well as all the property crime that is a result of abusers committing crimes to earn money for their drugs, saving our society hundreds of billions of dollars a year in law enforcement, courts, and corrections expenses. Those who abuse can be treated as health care issues and not turned into criminals by a system that wants to deny their existence.

Your argument boils down to two salient points.

1. Some people are already doing it, so we ought to let the rest do it too.
2. We can make money off of it.


These arguments are not specific to drugs. They are applicable to all crimes, such as robbery, rape, murder, and any other bad behavior. If this is the criteria for deciding the legitimacy of laws, then all laws can fall to such an argument.

If you think that's silly, don't forget the Church once sold indulgences, so the notion that people would NEVER try to make a buck by regulating crime is dead from the outset.

Not only do you save tons of money on the externalities of the illegal drug trade, but by taxing the drugs legally, you can spend those funds on the remaining health care issues of abuse. Once you accomplish this, then so-called "hard" drugs impose zero net cost on society just like alcohol and tobacco drug products do by paying taxes and being legally distributed to adults.

Geeze, where to start? You don't trade principles for money. Even if the profit is REALLY big. The last thing this government needs is more money, what it needs is the same thing that drug users need. Self Control. Not having drugs at all, has not only a zero net cost, it frees up all of that capitol for more useful things than a drug treatment circle jerk.

Malasia executes drug dealers. I bet their program is a lot less costly than ours. (per capita.)

[KitemanSA]

Absurd. Slavery is the violation of another's right to voluntary action in the extreme. Slavery is a CRIME, but was for many years not illegal. It's lack of illegality did NOT make it right. In the complete opposite, drug usage is a violation of NO-ONE except one-self. Drug use is NOT a crime, but for many years it HAS been illegal. That does NOT make it wrong. Night and day. Totally opposite. Sorry, maybe I was wrong. Maybe you CAN be that stupid?

As a question of Philosophy, legal or illegal is irrelevant. As a point of fact, slavery was legal at one time, and slaves weren't considered to be the equal of non slaves, legally or in any other regard.

The notion that all people are equal, regardless of race or creed, is in fact a relatively new attitude in human history, and it is actually a moral question. The people who maintained slavery, always objected to "Morality" being introduced into the legal system, but contrasted with Libertarians, it was just a different version of "Morality" that they were objecting to, one which most libertarians nowadays accept as valid, and so therefore have no objections to THIS "Morality" being imposed on everyone. (except TallDave, who has made it clear that he is consistent in his opposition to morality being imposed)

What I am saying, is by the rules of the day, slaves weren't regarded as full fledged "Persons" under the law, and so they didn't have the same rights as everyone else. The operative word is "Zeitgeist."

Again we get down to the basic question. Do you or do you not believe that "right" comes from law? If you answer yes, then we are on opposed sides of the big rift. To me, what is "right" IS. It is natural. You are endowed by your creator (God, your Sapient Parents, whatever you believe) with one un-alienable right. You, along with every other sapient being in the universe, have the right to voluntary action. (See Rule # 1).

Slaves had that right, they just didn't have the legal protection of it. Indeed, there was a legal SUPPRESSION of it. But slavery, the involuntary chattle ownership of one sapient being by another, is and always has been "wrong" no matter what it's legal status.

Regarding the opposition to or support of the imposition of "morality", the problem generally devolves to the fact that most folks use the term "morality" to mean "religious dogma" and I agree that I don't want your religious dogma placed on me. But there is natural law, and understanding of natural moral law is important to the long term survival of the human race.

[Diogenes]

The drug user will use drugs whether they are legal or illegal: this is a proven fact. In fact, the facts support the idea that prohibition increases use, especially among the groups who have the least concepts of what they do.

Criminals will commit crimes, whether they are legal or illegal:

Congratulations, you have just asserted that it is pointless to stop people from doing what they will do anyway. You have just made the argument that all crime prevention is pointless. Somehow I think you only want that idea to apply to drugs, and nothing else. Unfortunately, the concept applies just as well to all cases of crime.

Gentles, I believe here we have potentially identified the fundamental issue.
* Wizwom stated "The drug user will use drugs whether they are legal or illegal"
Diogenese misquoted "Criminals will commit crimes, whether they are legal or illegal:"

I did not misquote. I pointed out that this example is merely part of a subset to which the same argument ought to apply. I think my difficulty in communicating is assuming a greater degree of perceptiveness on the part of others than they actually posses.

Diogenese,
I have a simple yes/no question for you. Do you honestly believe that what defines a crime is its illegality?

Yes/No. You'll have to define the scope. If you regard the definition according to our legal system, the answer is yes.

If you regard the definition in accordance with objective, or natural law, then the answer is no.


Me, I have little respect for the reasoning behind the "official" law, and much prefer to see things in terms of objective or "Natural" law.

To expand on that question, in this case, is using a drug a crime to you because it is morally wrong, ethically bad, or legally a felony?

B-7.... You sunk my battleship!

Battleship is a two dimensional plot system. Imagine the game with three dimensions. Now imagine it with four or more. All of the things you mention constitute components which sum to a vector. The vector's magnitude and direction are dependent upon the size of each component.

Being legally a felony, is a very powerful component, but philosophically, not so much. "Wrong", in the context of vector components means so many different things. It might not be wrong in one component, but it is in another. You have to sum them all to get an overall perspective.

If it were a serious felony to wear a hat, then I would be imploring people not to wear hats. (at least until we got the law changed.)

My objection to drug use is based on the summed components of all information which I have learned, and the perceived consequences thereof.

Your answer here will allow reasonable people to decide whether you are capable of reasonable interchange.

Reasonable people? Where? All I see is a bunch of Libertarians!