If the Right really wants to embrace an ethos of small government and individual responsibility, then continued support for the war on drugs is untenable.
Sadly, they have been slow to recognize this, and now the issue may be evaporating on them.
Today, the Obama drug czar announced that he would like to see an end to the war on drugs:
“Regardless of how you try to explain to people it’s a ‘war on drugs’ or a ‘war on a product,’ people see a war as a war on them,” he said. “We’re not at war with people in this country.”
That might be because you don’t put a bag of grass in prison for 13 years, but the human being in possession of the bag is another story. Try explaining to him that you’re not at war with people, just the bag of dope.
The new Right (or anti-Left) could have seized on the war on drugs as another example of an out of control nanny state, but they blinked, clinging to their moral code, and now it might be too late for them.
They will have to resist the impulse to be against whatever the Obama administration supports, and avoid arguing in defense of a quagmire war against its own people. That is a loser argument no matter how you spin it.
On the other hand, the neo-Right could jump on this and champion an end to the war on drugs. The only chance they have to capitalize on the issue, or at least avoid being hammered with it by the Left, is to take the position that the government isn’t butting out enough.
It’s not a message that’s out of sync with the Tea Party movement. Smaller government isn’t just about taxes. Individual liberty means not relying on the government to force people to behave the way you want them to, even if it fits your moral code.
End welfare and I’ll support ending the war on drugs. I just don’t want some stupid, lazy pothead living on my tax dollars.
Good point Roy…but try this: tax dollars belong to the government. It’s what’s left I want to protect. I advise clients to drug test potential employees while staying focused on how to avoid taxes. Small business owners will always outsmart politicians. Smart employees will avoid drugs. End game will be free drugs from the government…like bleach in the gene pool (Google effect of drugs on fertility).
Three guesses whose political activists are going to be less effective due to ending the war on drugs.
Frank, do you include alcohol in your demonization of drug use by employees…who are, after all, private citizens after 5 p.m.?
Why does it make you feel better that there are stupid, lazy drunks living on your tax dollars?
The Right needs to decide between it’s better (Libertarian) self, or it’s darker (Authoritarian) self. Screeds about supporting lazy pot heads and bleach in the gene pool are perfect examples of the toxic authoritarian impulse that is turning the right into a small outdated faction of ‘true-believers’.
Walt- You wrote: “perfect examples of the toxic authoritarian impulse that is turning the right into a small outdated faction of true-believers.”
Answer: Too true, but what’s funny is for the left, that authoritarian impulse put them in control of the entire government. How’s that work?
“Answer: Too true, but what’s funny is for the left, that authoritarian impulse put them in control of the entire government.”
Actually that doesn’t work for me at all. The Left won by default. The Right absolutely deserved to be turned out of office for gross mismanagement. Obama won on personality, not ideology. Obama is far more pragmatic than the Right wants to acknowledge so I don’t think it’s a question of an Authoritarian impulse, as I understand the term.
That’s not to absolve the Left of a misplaced sense of priorities and a distorted sense of Federal/State power – but I don’t see it as Authoritarianism, even if I don’t like it.
Walt: Default was only a part of why they won. See the video in the following post.
http://www.foundingbloggers.com/wordpress/2009/04/video-kos-throws-stones-around-his-glass-nuthouse/
The Dems took a sharp turn left with a very authoritarian slant. They tolerated very little dissent and that paid off for them, in the short run at least.
Don’t get me wrong though Walt. I am not arguing for that to happen on the Right.