Classical Values :: Socons Watch Out

September 18, 2010

Socons Watch Out

I'm hanging over at Belmont Club and found a comment I rather liked.

121. sgi

If there is one thing and one thing only that will alienate other American voters from tea party candidates it is their social conservatism. Personal freedom must be extended to all Americans, even if their personal choices are offensive to social conservatives. Small government, freedom and responsibility are birds of a feather.
September 15, 2010 - 2:12 pm

It is the hubris that gets you. The "We Won" mentality. The Tea Party successes are not a call for Republican Socialism. What do I mean by that? The idea that you can eliminate vice by an act of Congress. What you really need is an Act of Congress AND a police state. I do not think the American people will stand for such a thing. One good example is the coming vote in California on the legalization of marijuana. Even five years ago such a vote was unthinkable. Win or lose in California - the tide is turning against pot prohibition. Eventually we will take the Swiss example to heart and legalize all drugs, for the simple reason that taking distribution out of the hands of criminals will make our streets safer and better protect our children.

So my socon friends, if you are really interested in smaller government and wish to stem the drift into an American police state you must consider the will of the people. Keep in mind:

DRUG WAR = BIG GOVERNMENT

Funny thing is that a contender for the Republican Presidential Nomination in 2012 agrees with me.

Gary Johnson, former two-term Republican governor of New Mexico, supports legalization of marijuana and argues that it will lead to a more effective fight against drugs. He blames the stalemate on the federal government and on both Republicans and Democrats.

"For the most part, politics is about following the herd as opposed to providing leadership," Johnson, who is speculated to be considering a run for the White House in 2012, told ABC News. "For me, it was a cost-benefit analysis, period. It's the fact that half of what we spend in law enforcement and the courts and the prisons is drug related, to what end?"

Johnson disagrees with the idea that dabbling in the politics of drugs would be harmful -- he cites his own approval rating as governor, saying it was steady even after he made his position known.

"It's a really good political issue because it's the truth. It's the emperor wears no clothes," he said.

One thing to keep in mind about the Swiss exaple so far is that they were against the legalization of pot. Why? Well you know - it is a REALLY dangerous drug. Still. The prohibition regime is breaking down. Socons can either get with the program or get drowned when the next tide of change rolls in. That would be unfortunate because we really do need smaller government.

But I do have another arrow in my quiver. Mexico. And Mexico is a disaster area and is getting worse.

It is wrecking the government of Mexico. It is financing the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is throwing 11,000 Britons into jail. It is corrupting democracy throughout Latin America. It is devastating the ghettoes of America and propagating Aids in urban Europe. Its turnover is some £200bn a year, on which it pays not a penny of tax. Thousands round the world die of it and millions are impoverished. It is the biggest man-made blight on the face of the earth.

No, it is not drugs. They are as old as humanity. Drugs will always be a challenge to individual and communal discipline, alongside alcohol and nicotine. The curse is different: the declaration by states that some drugs are illegal and that those who supply and use them are criminals. This is the root of the evil.

By outlawing products - poppy and coca - that are in massive global demand, governments merely hand huge untaxed profits to those outside the law and propagate anarchy. Repressive regimes, such as some Muslim ones, have managed to curb domestic alcohol consumption, but no one has been able to stop the global market in heroin and cocaine. It is too big and too lucrative, rivalling arms and oil on the international monetary exchanges. Forty years of "the war on drugs" have defeated all-comers, except political hypocrites.

Ah. Yes the hypocrites. That would be my socon friends who are all for smaller government except when it comes to their pet social engineering projects. Making people more moral at the point of a government gun.

Most western governments have turned a blind eye and decided to ride with the menace, since the chief price of their failure is paid by the poor. In Britain Tony Blair, Jack Straw and Gordon Brown felt tackling the drugs economy was not worth antagonising rightwing newspapers. Like most rich westerners they relied on regarding drugs as a menace among the poor but a youthful indiscretion among their own offspring.

Not to mention three American Presidents. So far. How is it that the elite are never subject (effectively) to their own laws? It is a mystery. None the less when there is one law for the common man and another for the aristocrats support for the rule of law breaks down.

But things get funnier. Much funnier. And not in a good way.

In countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, drugs are so endemic that criminalising them merely fuels a colossal corruption. It is rendering futile Nato's Afghan war effort, which requires the retraining of an army and police too addicted either to cure or to sack. Poppies are the chief source of cash for farmers whose hearts and minds Nato needs to win, yet whose poppy crop (ultimately for Nato nations) finances the Taliban. It is crazy.

The worst impact of criminalisation is on Latin America. Here the slow emergence of democratic governments - from Bolivia through Peru and Columbia to Mexico - is being jeopardised by America's "counter-narcotics" diplomacy through the US Drug Enforcement Agency. Rather than try to stem its own voracious appetite for drugs, rich America shifts guilt on to poor supplier countries. Never was the law of economics - demand always evokes supply - so traduced as in Washington's drugs policy. America spends $40bn a year on narcotics policy, imprisoning a staggering 1.5m of its citizens under it.

Cocaine supplies routed through Mexico have made that country the drugs equivalent of a Gulf oil state. An estimated 500,000 people are employed in the trade, all at risk of their lives, with 45,000 soldiers deployed against them. Border provinces are largely in the hands of drug barons and their private armies. In the past four years 28,000 Mexicans have died in drug wars, a slaughter that would outrage the world if caused by any other industry (such as oil). Mexico's experience puts in the shade the gangsterism of America's last failed experiment in prohibition, the prewar alcohol ban.

Just like alcohol prohibition the effort to stamp out vice (harming one's self) has corrupted institutions and individuals.

I think we ought to put an end to this foolishness before America winds up like Mexico and socons get a semi-permanent black eye (nothing is permanent in American politics - after all socons have come back despite the failure of one of their pet projects - alcohol prohibition).

Cross Posted at Power and Control

posted by Simon on 09.18.10 at 07:40 AM

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Comments

There is a subset of the Republican Party that wants to make the party platform: "A fertilized egg is a human being and the universe is 7000 years old." If that is the case, I decline to participate.

Craig · September 18, 2010 09:44 AM

Actually the Swiss are not that wild about legalized drugs.

Ray · September 18, 2010 09:58 AM

Craig, you are falling for Teh Narrative™. There is a subset of the Democratic Party that calls for death to all embryos! They don't get called out as emblematic of the entire Party.

The world is full of kooks, and many of them get fanatic (or nearly so) about their obsessions. For good or ill, they vote, and there is nothing wrong with a Party that accommodates them without making their obsessions the main point. Democrats are good at that, because they have the support of the media, who are happy to downplay Democratic kooks and raise Republican kooks to emblematic status.

Case in point: Rev. Wright and Black Liberation Theology, which really is a mainstay of the Democratic Party -- and whose followers are both more numerous and more violently assertive than "young Earth" creationists. Do they get teevee time? No.

Regards,
Ric

Ric Locke · September 18, 2010 10:16 AM

Ray,

Of course they are not wild about it. They merely consider it the lesser evil.

They are going for "drug problem" vs "drug plus crime problem".

And they voted for it twice. Bigger margin the second time. Which I think is a clue.

M. Simon · September 18, 2010 10:47 AM

Ric,

The difficulty is that once you sign on for "government must protect embryos" you drive the practice underground where it is much harder to combat.

RU-486 instead of being a minor part of the equation will become a Very Big Deal. How can you stop it? How will you combat menstrual extraction parties (look that one up - it will astound you)?

If you really want to change the culture you are going to have to find out why women have abortions (not stereotypes - real research) address that and also work on changing the culture.

It is not a job government can do because 80% of Americans (is that all?) don't trust government.

In many ways social conservatives are socialists. They believe "Government can....". Well I have news for you. No it can't.

And here we see every day socons ridiculing liberals for their faith in government when in fact they are seriously infected with the same disease. Pity.

M. Simon · September 18, 2010 10:58 AM

Soflee, soflee, M. Simon; I agree with you, and my comment wasn't addressed to that part of the argument, anyway. My point is that the extreme, theocratic wing of the "socons" isn't a bigger part of the overall conservative (slash "Republican") movement than their equal and opposite extreme is of the Democrats'.

Ric Locke · September 18, 2010 02:10 PM

Not sure what happened; there was supposed to be a "...but that's not what you see on teevee" appended to the last sentence.

I wrote an essay at least tangentially related to this, and I'd be interested in your critique. Let's see if I can paste in the URL without getting the mouse into some weird mode:

http://warlocketx.wordpress.com/2010/09/18/learning-process/

Ric Locke · September 18, 2010 02:46 PM

I guess I wasn't quite clear in my first comment. I really don't care if a Republican candidate is pro-abortion or anti-abortion. I am concerned that a large number of Republican voters would prefer an anti-abortion, Creationist candidate who couldn't balance a budget if he tried to a pro-abortion, atheist who believes in small government, prudently managed. If the Republican candidate for president is in the first category, I'm afraid I'll have to write in a name.

Craig · September 18, 2010 02:46 PM

Yeah, Craig. But you wouldn't bring up the objection unless you thought it was credible -- and the only way to make it credible is to toss anybody and everybody who notes that his or her faith is being challenged, if not persecuted, into the bin labeled "anti-abortion, Creationist...who couldn't balance a budget." That, in turn, is pure Narrative. The "Reagan Coalition" was a juggernaut, and the Left immediately began searching for ways to break it up; the attitude that anybody at all who expresses any degree of faith must inevitably and of necessity be a young-Earth Creationist loon was one of the things they thought up to do that, and you've bought it lock, stock, and shibboleth.

Regards,
Ric

Ric Locke · September 18, 2010 04:27 PM

Anybody at all who expresses any degree of faith must inevitably and of necessity be a young-Earth Creationist loon was one of the things they thought up to do that, and you've bought it lock, stock, and shibboleth.

I guess I'll have to simplify my statement even more: I do not care about a Republican candidate's religious views or opinions about abortion. I will vote Republican only if the candidate believes in small government, prudently managed, and only if the candidate is actually willing to follow through on that belief.

Craig · September 18, 2010 05:44 PM

"Small government" does not mean "too weak to do the very specific jobs it's supposed to do," which are 1) defend the state and 2) enforce the laws.

And if those laws are about controlling access to a dangerous toxin that ruins its users' health while destroying their capacity to control their own use, then those laws should be enforced.

Criminalizing anything creates a market for the thing criminalized. If that is a deal-breaker why have laws at all? Laws recognize that some behaviours are too destructive to the behaver, those around him, and those affected by him to be tolerated by society. If you don't think addiction meets these criteria, I can't help but wonder how many addicts you've known or worked with.

(Full disclosure: I saw a close friend of mine through rehab, so the notion of legalizing the behaviour of those who exploited his destructive weakness for their own profit is repugnant to me. But more to the point, even the most permissive drug laws imaginable would still require age limits, dose limits and taxes, none of which any current user or seller is interested in.)

Policing drugs is not about making people more moral. It is about stopping the evil from exploiting the ignorant and reducing them to a point where they can no longer function morally at all. That "massive demand" for poppy and coca is not a free choice. It is a sickness that cannot be cured unless the people spreading it can be stopped and shown for the monsters they are. That is not social engineering; that is social preservation, and that is the province of government, whatever its size.

Stephen J. · September 20, 2010 05:49 PM