When I was six, I had what I thought was a very smart idea: a stop sign just for bad buys. That way everyone who was not a bad guy could ignore it, but while the bad guys are stopped it would be easier for the police to catch them.
My excuse for that idea is that I was six.
My father, having a PhD in psychology and therefore knowing nothing about how people think, got very annoyed with my idea for being so silly, and said that by drawing that stop sign on a sheet of paper I was wasting paper.
Eventually I grew up and realized why my idea would not work. The problem is, I am still waiting for progressives and conservatives to grow up and realize why my idea would not work.
Oh, they would never dream of putting up a stop sign for bad guys, true. But progressives do really believe in gun laws, and conservatives do really believe in morality laws.
It always amazes me, every time I read any online gun debate. The progressive point of view is that some guy will be pondering a crime, and as he is preparing will discover that his gun is forbidden. Then he will say “gee, I was going to rob a bank, but I cannot use my gun to do that. I guess I will stay home instead.”
I am also amazed with the drug debate. The conservative point of view is that some guy will be pondering purchasing some drugs, will see an advertisement on television saying “just say no,” and say “Gee, I didn’t know that this stuff was bad. I guess I won’t do this anymore.”
They both believe that at some level that criminals obey the law. The law is sacred. People stop at a stop sign, not because it may be good for traffic control or because they don’t want a ticket, but because it is a stop sign and that is what you are supposed to do at stop signs.
Perhaps they can be satisfied in their quest for ever more laws by passing a law that says it is illegal to break the law, an idea a six year old can really appreciate.
Less
aynrkey
bostonteapartygoer
Kenn Jacobine
mattdharris
Mike Seebeck
Miche
paulie
Jim Davidson
ponggod
Stuart Richards
Todd Andrew Barnett
The trouble with this commentary is that it makes the most serious arguments from the opposition into a straw man. Statist prohibitionists don’t want to prevent “criminals” from smoking weed: they want to prevent “noncriminals” from smoking weed. They want to prevent conformists from smoking weed, and they don’t care about all the additional criminals that that creates. In short: they don’t think about the negative consequences of enlarging the number of people who are considered to be criminals.
Statist liberals and conservatives do not believe that “criminals” or “outlaws” will obey the gun laws. They want to make gun possession into a crime so that the police can choose whom they have power over, often in the pursuit of other crimes (things more legitimately considered crimes). They also believe that most people are too stupid to control their own behavior, and that simply by possessing a destructive tool, that tool will come into misuse, and damage either the owners of it, or the owner’s family or innocent bystanders.
Statist prohibitionist arguments really fail on “practical” grounds for several reasons:
1) They take police resources away from solving actual crimes (“mala in se” crimes), such as rape, robbery, and murder. The first / former senior profiler for the FBI, John Douglas, states that by diverting police resources into the DEA (and other prohibitionist law enforcement), taxpayers are making a statement that they are OK with more assault, robbery, and sex crimes (including serial murder, and child abuse). (…Anarchists don’t get to use this argument, which makes them less effective at convincing those who are aware of Douglas’ contribution, and the contribution of the kind of police who comprise LEAP.) As an example of this, IL had, for several years, over 2,000 untested rape kits. (While, simultaneously, most of the people arrested were arrested for nonviolent drug offenses and other victimless crimes.)
2) Family members of a dangerous or unskilled person do not currently have any legal recourse to deprive the dangerous or unskilled person of their dangerous tool. If a family member sees a family member who is a public menace with drugs or guns, they might not report their dangerous behavior or intervene, as they would with an alcoholic, because, they know that if the situation escalates, their loved one will not go to counseling, they will go to prison. …So they say nothing, and hope that the situation does not become catastrophic. (Not the best course of action!) With zero options short of the wrong one (prison/slavery!) negligent gun ownership and negligent drug use often becomes more catastrophic than it would be, if gun and drug ownership were legal.
3) If police have the power to stop anyone for possession of guns or drugs, then they have the ability to stop anyone for anything. This empowers the police to pursue perverse incentives, (such as the ability to steal drug or gun owners’ property under the siezure laws, pull people over on the basis of their racial identity, harass women looking for law-breakers that they can pressure into sex, etc…). This encourages the widespread police brutality, corruption, and lack of crime prevention that have made our cities the violent and abusive places they are today. It has also divided cities down racial lines: politicians know they can allow police free reign in racial minority areas, because those areas cannot defend themselves via the vote. Since the drug war employs so many people, and enables the state to steal large amounts of money (confiscations/siezures), black areas of Chicago have become ground zero for “drug enforcement” and “gun task force” activity. This is the very definition of tyranny and oppression.
The fact that “criminals” don’t obey the law is true. But the real fact is that NOBODY obeys the laws, because they make criminals of normal, otherwise law-abiding citizens. (Or threaten to make statist snitches out of the willfully ‘uninvolved’. …Snitches are often retaliated against by those who are semi-rationally and fully-sociopathically engaged in illegal business –another downfall of the drug war.)
Are there people who have raging crazy tempers walking around with guns, frequently getting high, who are disasters waiting to happen?
Yes.
Does outlawing their tools of (self) destruction imprison some of them, and make them less destructive? …Maybe. (Of course, this leaves out the fact that they’re going to get out of jail after having been around a lot of other bitter, angry, REAL, VIOLENT criminals who might have been in jail for a legitimate reason. It also allows them to form criminal friendships while they are in prison, and learn new criminal skills during the whole time they are incarcerated. That’s why law enfocement often calls maximum security prisons “Gladiator Academies”).
So let’s say that you’re “on the fence” about whether to legalize drugs and guns, and other dangerous things.
The practical arguments are covered above, in fair detail. (A fuller analysis is contained in “The New Prohibition” ed. Bill Masters)
The pragmatic arguments against the drug war are all roughly included under the general argument: “Black markets are impossible to control, in the absence of a totalitarian state.”
The statists who think a totalitarian state is a good idea are immune to most of the pragmatist arguments. They think that technology might allow humanity to basically be controlled in a top-down fashion (and even advanced futurists and predictive technologists have to admit that they might be right about that: google: “What Price Freedom?” by Robert Freitas). These totalitarians think it’s OK to have “big brother” in every house (a consequence of prohibition). They think it’s OK that medical innovators and other peaceful drug users who harm noone (except possibly themselves) should be victimized by the thousands, if it prevents even one conformist kid from trying drugs. They think it’s OK to have children informing on their parents, and as a consequence, placing them in institutions or burdening other family members. …The totalitarians don’t mind stopping for police or other state-employed busy-bodies, and answering personal questions about what private property they own, what they’re doing, etc. during traffic stops, or anywhere, in the course of their daily life. These same totalitarians also don’t care if other people are similarly hassled.
And they are also immune to the moral arguments, because they don’t care about individual rights, and they don’t care about the state violating those rights. …But they need to pretend to care, because Jesus said “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” And that’s the only real tool we have, to defeat them in public debate, using their own core arguments. (I imagine that this is Dinesh D’Souza’s core argument, since he’s a totalitarian Republican who sells his totalitarianism with anti-totalitarian contradictory arguments, while hoping people are too stupid to figure things out for themselves, and become libertarians.)
Jesus’s poor phrasing of what amounts to: “Thou shalt not initiate force or perpetrate fraud on thy neightbor” has confused a lot of religious people. (Statists are overwhelmingly religious, but the rebellion against rightwing-religious-statism has recently caused a lot of dim-witted leftist atheists to rebel against “constitutionality”, because the right-statists often claim to be religious constitutionalists and most of the leftists are too dumb to intelligently investigate either of their claims. For a basic refutation of the incorrect D’souza view of the U.S. Constitution, read Spooner’s “Essay on the Unconstitutionality of Slavery”.)
The illogical religionists typically get around the moral argument by saying “I prohibit myself from using drugs and so I AM treating my neighbor as myself, by prohibiting him from using them as well.”
But of course, that also means that if treats himself to broccoli, he should also treat his neighbor to broccoli, even if his neighbor hates it. If he prohibits himself from watching TV, eating McDonald’s, or masturbating at night he should also prohibit his neighbor from doing so. The benevolent intentions of Christ are thereby perverted into a “one-size-fits-all” overly-restricted palate. And, if you ask the prohibitionists if they want to use drugs, visit whores, or gamble, they will usually say “no”. Therefore, they are “prohibiting themselves” from doing something they don’t even like to do. …Not much of an accomplishment! …It would be like me “prohibiting myself” from singing in a choir, or hanging out with bible-thumping Jehovah’s witnesses.
Moreover, the thing that they are doing is claiming to have more knowledge about what practices are good and what practices are bad. …In short, they are saying that they believe their local priest (who is the first person most politicians have learned to subvert) over the words contained in the bible (Genesis 1:29):
http://bible.cc/genesis/1-29.htm
God said, “Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree, which bears fruit yielding seed. It will be your food.”
Of course, most of us don’t need a bible (or “Atlas Shrugged”) to comprehend that ‘initiating force is morally wrong’. We naturally do not get into violent confrontations with people we meet, because doing so would be
1) foolish –it would likely lead to retribution, and ultimately to our possible destruction.
and
2) of no value to us –aggressing against others doesn’t help us in any way.
Basically, the only time we operate against this rule is in the voting booth. When voting, Americans endorse the idea of theivery, but they do so in a way that they believe will not be traced back to them (since they are basically cowards, or too ‘uninvolved’ to vote, or both).
Most people see that the above is true, and conduct themselves accordingly. They would never openly steal from someone on the street, even if they thought they might get away with it, but they do endorse the theft of the government when they vote, even though they do so in a very confused and self-contradictory way (that they believe they will never need to defend in public). However, even though this is true, the moral law prohibiting the initiation of force should be clearly spelled out for the one sociopathic class of citizens that makes life difficult for the rest of us:
…politicians.
Politicians use flowery language to dress up the initiation of force (aggression), and make it sound like a good idea.
…It never is. (Except in the case of rape, robbery, and murder: things that have been illegal in the USA since long before 1776, in virtually every locality.)
As of 2009, there were approximately 1.2 million nonviolent “victimless crime” offenders in prison, for actions that harmed no person other than (possibly) themselves. Being in prison clearly harms them more than remaining free, and it also harms society more.
Those in prison are surrounded by bad influences. Those in prison are not raising their families, and not gainfully employed. Those in prison are not trading with other businesses and contributing to those businesses’ wealth. Those in prison are subjected to emotional harm and abuse from the other inmates, and from the guards, and from isolation from their families and friends. Those who are released from prison are less wealthy than before they entered prison and are highly motivated to engage in illegal activity with the contacts they’ve made inside the prison. With a REVOLVING 1.2 million people in the criminal justice system (around 7.5 million people total!) the USA is approaching the injustice of a truly communist system, where literally EVERYONE is a suspected enemy of the state.
Police now usually claim that they cannot return items stolen in petty theft (ie: if you go to a police station and ask them to track down the person who stole your car stereo, they probably will tell you you’re “out of luck”). …But the police always investigate claims that someone is growing marijuana. The first activity (legitimate law enforcement) doesn’t give them any extra status, or any larger paycheck, or any upward mobility in their careers, while the second activity does.
If we ended prohibition, not only would we no longer be criminalizing the average joe baggie (joe sixpack’s nearest cousin), we would be one step closer to being a free society and a tolerant society. One cannot exist without the other.
PEACE,
Jake Witmer