Michael Gerson: Ron Paul’s land of second-rate values

[alp227]

Before last week’s South Carolina Republican debate, Ron Paul supporters complained that their candidate was not getting the first-tier attention his polling and fundraising should bring. It is true that Paul has often been overlooked and dismissed, as one might treat a slightly dotty uncle. But perhaps some first-tier scrutiny is deserved.

Paul was the only candidate at the debate to make news, calling for the repeal of laws against prostitution, cocaine and heroin. The freedom to use drugs, he argued, is equivalent to the freedom of people to “practice their religion and say their prayers.” Liberty must be defended “across the board.” “It is amazing that we want freedom to pick our future in a spiritual way,” he said, “but not when it comes to our personal habits.”

This argument is strangely framed: If you tolerate Zoroastrianism, you must be able to buy heroin at the quickie mart. But it is an authentic application of libertarianism, which reduces the whole of political philosophy to a single slogan: Do what you will — pray or inject or turn a trick — as long as no one else gets hurt.

Even by this permissive standard, drug legalization fails. The de facto decriminalization of drugs in some neighborhoods — say, in Washington, D.C. — has encouraged widespread addiction. Children, freed from the care of their addicted parents, have the liberty to play in parks decorated by used needles. Addicts are liberated into lives of prostitution and homelessness. Welcome to Paulsville, where people are free to take soul-destroying substances and debase their bodies to support their “personal habits.”

Full story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ron_pauls_land_of_second_rate_values/2011/05/09/AFD8B2bG_story.html

[Warpy]

1. Christ, there is so much wrong with just these few paragraphs

it's hard to know where to begin.

First, legalizing recreational drugs doesn't mean selling them at the Quickie Mart. It means regulating them like tobacco and alcohol, keeping them away from kids. That pipeline is wide open now, bozo, since criminals don't care who they sell to.

Second, the reason for addiction--and admit it, bozo, most of that addiction is to alcohol--in the depressed areas of every city is not the easy availability of recreational drugs. It's the pervasive hopelessness of people who were born on the bottom and know they'll always have to stay there. Searching for an escape from that is certainly understandable.

The whole war on drugs is an unconstitutional travesty that twists tax law out of all recognition in order that moral crusaders can feel good about themselves. It has contributed to massive crime in this country. It has not stopped a single determined person from accessing drugs. Worse, it's contributed to the whole mess by increasing the background level of violence in the lives of already desperate people. Drug addiction is a public health problem, not a moral or legal one, in any case.

I'm not going to read the rest of that article because the glaring idiocy in the paragraphs cited were enough to allow me to know that the bozo author is a good little Drug Warrior who is unable to look at any question outside the bullshit he's been handed all his life.

In any case, give me a choice between dealing with a heroin addict and an alcoholic in the hospital setting, I'll take the junkie, thanks.