National Review calls for an end to the federal war against marijuana.
So, are they conservative, or libertarian, or what?
7 thoughts on “It’s Not Just Bill Buckley Any More”
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National Review calls for an end to the federal war against marijuana.
So, are they conservative, or libertarian, or what?
Comments are closed.
They’re not-of-the-Left. That’s all that matters. They may agree on very little, but that doesn’t matter — they’re the unwashed masses, so they’re all the same. /sarc
I do not believe marijuana is any more harmful than alcohol, in many ways, less so. There is no point to the ban.
I think there is a corollary to your oft-repeated and quite correct maxim that “they aren’t liberals” waiting to be defined here.
So that we’ve banned cigarette smoke from everywhere but the open desert, it’s okay to legalize Pot? Ya sure, so where you going to you smoke it?
Add: Sell your hydrophonics stock, now.
In addition to the libertarian case against drug prohibition, with which we are all familiar, there is a conservative case, which might be summarized as “Although there are circumstances under which the state might properly ban certain drugs, in the present case the harm to community coherence and erosion of respect for the rule of law have begun to outweigh the costs that using drugs are imposing on the community. A Burkean respects this and starts to figure out how to adapt to the changing circumstances.” Some NR contributors hold to the libertarian case, some to the conservative case, and some seem to have a hybrid of the two.
There’s a simplier case that can be made without regard to politics: It isn’t working.
An oft-quoted saying (variously attributed to Einstein and MLK) is that “one definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while hoping for a different outcome.”
Not only is the war on some drugs a rehash of the failed Prohibition policies, we’ve been involved in the war for 50 years or so. It isn’t working. To continue along this path is seemingly insane because we keep doing the same things while hoping for a different outcome. It’s also corrupting our society.
Not that legalizing all drugs would be a completely good thing. As I’ve written before, one of my nieces is a long time drug addict. She has abandoned her children because of drugs and as of a couple years ago, she’s still having children who may be born addicted. As an adult (she turns 40 this year), she’s entitled to mess up her own life but she has also created havoc for her kids. Doing drugs isn’t always a victimless crime, not by a long shot.
Even if marijuana should be banned, the FEDERAL government has no business doing so (10th Amendment, you know). The states are free to ban it or not, and to see what the fallout is from either course.