Posted on 06/02/2002 1:49:53 PM PDT by wienerdog.com
HOW TO TELL
by M. L. Simon
How can you tell the right from the left in America? We do it like any good pollster or reporter would. We ask questions.
So the first question is, "Do you believe that putting a gun to an honest non-violent person's head is the way to get the world you want?" Who in America would answer yes to such a question? So we have established a principle. Just to make it clear, we can ask a second question. "Would you be willing to hire gunmen to do the job for you?" No? "What if the gunmen were government enforcers?" I will assume a more hesitant no.
The next question to ask is, "Would you put a gun to people's heads to get social justice?" Right about now, about half my audience is going very wobbly on me. They see pictures of poor people. They see the hungry, the out of work, and they say to me, "Who wouldn't put a gun to people's heads to eliminate suffering? My reply is this: We have programs galore and we haven't done much to put an end to such suffering. In fact, we have held back progress while trying to help. Suppose that in the 50 years since WWII the government had been limited to it's constitutional functions. Milton Friedman estimates that would give us a growth rate of 10 percent a year versus the 3 percent we are actually getting. We would have an economy 26 times as large as we do today. There would be plenty to go around.
So even if it is morally acceptable to force people to pay for social justice, it doesn't work too well. It actually retards the wealth needed to pay for what is wanted. So much for the left.
The next question to ask is, "Would you put a gun to people's heads to get morality?" Right about now, the other half of my audience is going very wobbly on me. Because, "Your body is God's temple, it is not your own." Which may very well be true, but here comes the tricky part for a free country. "We who are closer to God, having studied in divinity school, are pleased to tell you exactly how God wants you to behave. For your own spiritual betterment, we are going to prohibit moral pollutants like drugs."
Why do they say this these days? Because they have no better argument left. Whatever harm drugs do, prohibition increases the harm ten-fold. From an overdose standpoint, marijuana is safer than aspirin or alcohol. Even heroin is relatively safe if the antidote for heroin poisoning was at hand for an addict ( we have laws against making the antidote available so as to maximize the number of deaths from heroin ). So we have people from religious schools telling us how to live, and this isn't even Saudi Arabia.
The spiritual question is so important that it can't be left to chance or choice. Like those religious stalwarts of the Spanish Inquisition, they intend to get the right answer from you if it kills you. And in fact, occasionally it does. Usually we get a person killed every month or two in a marijuana bust gone bad. The rest that are captured are tortured for varying lengths of time by imprisonment until their attitude towards their evil behavior changes, or someone can post bail. These religious conversions do not come cheap. We are willing to spend $20,000 or more a year on these practitioners of the false drug religion until they change their ways.
Because everyone knows that drugs cannot bring you happiness ( unless it's Prozac ), only God can bring you happiness ( unless it's Prozac ).
The funny thing here, too, is that it doesn't work. Let us just take one small part of the culture war. Recent studies show that government anti-drug advertising at best is useless and at worst may actually encourage 12- and 13-year-olds to try drugs. As almost any government program, it accomplishes the opposite of its stated intentions. So we have demolished from both an intellectual and practical standpoint the arguments of the left and the right in favor of using government enforcers for their own pet programs. Given the sheer numbers involved in promoting the use of force to solve religious and economic problems, I don't expect change anytime soon in the prevailing morality. The best we can hope for is kinder jailers and gentler enforcers. I'm not holding my breath on that one either.
If you would like to find out more about what a free country was really supposed to be like, you can read copies of the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence, and other good stuff for free:
http://mywebpage.netscape.com/msimon669/index.html.
Boy, I get tired of the misuse of this term. What he (and everyone else who talks about how "You can't legislate morality.) is really referring to is sexual morality, not moarlity in general.
But the word morality refers to any defining of right vs. wrong. What else would you legislate about? Every law out there is at least intended to outlaw a wrong. Examples: murder, rape, theft, assault, etc. are illegal because some group made a moral distinction that these activities were wrong and should be illegal, then got enough people to go along with them.
A minor point, but misusing the words allows people to be self-righteous about "legislating morality" without stating their real viewpoint, which is that sexual morality should be the sole area of life immune from legislation. Such a position is perhaps defensible, but if we don't use the terms correctly, it won't be debated properly.
The morality of growing a vegetable for purposes of
smoking it is sexual? Must be some killer weed.
The paper itself is into suggesting just about anything against Bush that is suggested by the looney tunes who call C-Span in the morning. There is nothing to see here, folks. Move along now.
Not exactly. Murder, rape, theft, assault, etc. are illegal because it is a recognized, objective fact that these activities directly violate the rights of others.
When people use the expression "You can't legislate morality," they are almost invariably talking about either drug laws or sex laws.
Do you disagree?
If you do, please give me an example of a law that was not passed to enforce some group's version of morality.
LOL
Anyway, the existence of natural human rights is not and cannot be a recognized, objective fact. The theory of human rights is based on a large number of preconceptions, such as that all men are created equal, etc. I happen to agree with these beliefs, but they are not scientifically provable, nor are they facts. They are opinions which collectively form a secular faith.
Rape, murder, theft, robbery, fraud, etc. violates rights. Gardening doesn't.
Certainly all real crimes (again, meaning violation of another's rights) are immoral, but everything immoral is not a crime.
We take these truths to be self evident...
But on a practical level it comes down to what you're willing to bleed for.
Sure they can. Go out and attempt to murder, rape, rob, or otherwise steal from another person. If they fight back, resist, or in anyway try to prevent or stop you, then you can be pretty sure that person believes you are violating their natural rights.
Actually, I've seen remarkably few articles claiming that drugs should be outlawed because its God's Will, or using any theological reason whatsoever. Perhaps theology is the reason behind those presented in favor of the war on drugs, but I suspect the author is using a "guilt-by-association" tactic here.
IOW, fundementalist theologians are dangerous people, therefore anything they are in favor of must be evil. Fundamentalists are in favor of the war on drugs, therefore the war on drugs must be a Bad Thing.
Which it may very well be, but this line of "reasoning" is specious and irrelevant.
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