Why do liberals insist on subjective morality being laws?

[Damocles]

you are really maturing....it's been cool to watch.....in cyberspace, that is!

Right, he must be mature, he agreed with you...

 

[Cancel7]

Not if it infringes on the rights of others.

People who get themselves addicted to heroin, are a public burden to the rest of us - in terms of taxes, healthcare, and treatment.

Drugs should be treated as a public health threat. Not a crime.

I think there are good points on both sides of this argument, but I wonder Cypress, don't people who are addicted to nearly anything place some burden on society? Certainly alcoholics do. What about people addicted to gambling? They destroy families, leaving broken homes with single parents and no money. Who picks up that burden?

I don't know. Heroin is pretty steep stuff, or maybe I just think so because I've never done it. But it's a pretty hard example to refute. But if you measure it against the cost to society of having to build jails to house these users, it can really make you wonder if it's worth it.

 

[FUCK THE POLICE]

Maybe if we come up with something to counteract the addiction. But we certainly know now that the addiction is going to kill them, and we must rehab them in order to save them. Maybe you equate this to "Save yourself, or else", but I don't care. The human brain CAN be messed with and is not perfect, and this is something complete libertarianism fails to account for.

You are saying it is the responsibility of government to protect you from being able to make bad decisions. There is no limitation on how big and oppressive government can grow to be when you give them the charge of saving people from themselves.

Government can only do enough to save us from each other. It will never be able to save us from ourselves.

But if you want to focus on pragmatism I say this simply, it won't work. 100 years of prohibition shows this.

This isn't prohibition. I don't want to lock people up because they take Meth. I want to reform them. It's a public health threat, and anyway, you are using a slippery slope argument. I am trying to take a more pragmatic approach on drugs, is simply abolishing all laws on them going to help better than my plan of reform?

 

[Damocles]

Not if it infringes on the rights of others.

People who get themselves addicted to heroin, are a public burden to the rest of us - in terms of taxes, healthcare, and treatment.

Drugs should be treated as a public health threat. Not a crime.

While I agree principally.. It isn't because a person chooses to destroy themselves with drugs that I care to help them out. It is because they largely cannot support themselves with a job, regardless of the legality of the drugs and will victimize others directly to get their fix...

Making them illegal exacerbates this, but the presense of direct victims gives reason for the government to step in. In fact it is their job to do so...

 

[IHateGovernment]

Not if it infringes on the rights of others.

People who get themselves addicted to heroin, are a public burden to the rest of us - in terms of taxes, healthcare, and treatment.

Drugs should be treated as a public health threat. Not a crime.

And that is the problem with things like universal healthcare. Once you enact these things you get to tell people what to do in order to keep costs down.

Whats the difference between telling someone they can't shoot heroin to telling them they can't eat at McDonalds or smoke cigarettes.

This is the main reason I oppose state funded healthcare. They will just use it to control our behavior.

 

[FUCK THE POLICE]

I don't support the war on drugs. I realize that we're never going to win it, I'm just settling for a more moderate solution than legalizing everything, as I think ti would be more pragmatic.

When you abandon basic principle in favor of pragmatism as the bedrock for your political views you open the door to an anything goes type of policy. As an atomic libertarian I would not suggest relegalizing every single illegal drug with one stroke of the pen. However once marijuana is legalized the feasibility of leglaizing things like mushrooms and ecstacy can be looked at and then on to cocaine and methamphetamines. Beyond that if we pursue a market solution in which major manufacturers produce these drugs instead of criminals in a basement we can tax its sale, ensure its purity and control its sale to minors.

I'm in the same sphere, but I don't think that government is necessarily evil, nor do I believe that limiting individual actions, in most cases, is also evil. I seek moderation in those issues.

It has nothing to do with evil. I personally have a high threshold of what I would consider evil. What it has to do with is the rights of the individual and self harm is one of those individuals. Otherwise you reduce people to being mere supplicants to an entity with greater ability to use force upon them to make them behave in a manner the stronger entity deems suitable.

The mind is not above manipulation... although the taking of the drugs heroine and meth may be voluntary, the addiction is not. After a while it becomes all consuming. It messes with the brain, and destroys human nature. Am I "anti-liberty" for saying that such drugs should be limited?

Many things can be addictive: alcohol, cigarettes, video games, sex. To limit the ways in which an invidual chooses to alter their mind is to place state ownership over anothers mind. These drugs alter the mind however other things also alter it such as the imparting of knowledge, traumatic experience, and daily routine. A government has no legitimate authority to mandate that certain forms of mind alteration are acceptable but that others are not.

This is a cornerstone of social conservatism in that you desire that the state have the power to regulate personal behavior in order to foster a preconceived social order. There is little difference in curtailing drug usage than curtailing sex habits or censoring ideas.

IHG, EVERYTHING is theoretically addictive. However, meth, for instance, is especially so. It's not so crazy to say that a slight video game addiction should be tolerated in society, however, to say that something that will consume you and literally kill you from the first time you take it, it is not so ridiculous to ban. 93% of the people who take meth for the first time die from it. 7% are reformed.

 

[IHateGovernment]

IHG, my position on the war on drugs would be considered ridiculously liberal by at least 95% of America. I have no idea how you can claim I am "selling out" on something I never believed in in the first place.

I didn't call you a sellout. Also more than 5% of the population believes in the legalization of marijuana.

 

[FUCK THE POLICE]

There is a time at which we know a chemical will cause reactions which will not be voluntary, and no matter how much the individual desires to live the desire to take the drug will be stronger. Whenever we reach that threshold, we as a society should make the decision to prevent people. It is not "controlling" people, or oppressing them.

 

[Cypress]

Not if it infringes on the rights of others.

People who get themselves addicted to heroin, are a public burden to the rest of us - in terms of taxes, healthcare, and treatment.

Drugs should be treated as a public health threat. Not a crime.

And that is the problem with things like universal healthcare. Once you enact these things you get to tell people what to do in order to keep costs down.

Whats the difference between telling someone they can't shoot heroin to telling them they can't eat at McDonalds or smoke cigarettes.

This is the main reason I oppose state funded healthcare. They will just use it to control our behavior.

If you don't see a fundamental difference between heroin addiction, and McDonalds fries, we probably won't find any common ground.

Obesity and heroin should both be treated as public heath threats - not crimes.

The odds that someone is going to become drastically sick and incapacitated from heroin, tends to be a little higher than eating fries. There is no equvalency.

 

[FUCK THE POLICE]

I think there are good points on both sides of this argument, but I wonder Cypress, don't people who are addicted to nearly anything place some burden on society? Certainly alcoholics do. What about people addicted to gambling? They destroy families, leaving broken homes with single parents and no money. Who picks up that burden?

I don't know. Heroin is pretty steep stuff, or maybe I just think so because I've never done it. But it's a pretty hard example to refute. But if you measure it against the cost to society of having to build jails to house these users, it can really make you wonder if it's worth it.

Jails are absolutely USELESS to control the spread of drugs. We should focus soley on reform, punishment is not something that will work except in moderate amounts.

 

[Cypress]

I think there are good points on both sides of this argument, but I wonder Cypress, don't people who are addicted to nearly anything place some burden on society? Certainly alcoholics do. What about people addicted to gambling? They destroy families, leaving broken homes with single parents and no money. Who picks up that burden?

I don't know. Heroin is pretty steep stuff, or maybe I just think so because I've never done it. But it's a pretty hard example to refute. But if you measure it against the cost to society of having to build jails to house these users, it can really make you wonder if it's worth it.

Society has to make choices.

I would allow public policy to be guided by science, medical knowledge, and reason.

The odds of somebody shooting up heroin becoming ultimatley sick and incapacitated, far outweighs the odds of somebody scarfing Burger King fries and becoming ill and incapcitated.

 

[BRUTALITOPS]

Not if it infringes on the rights of others.

People who get themselves addicted to heroin, are a public burden to the rest of us - in terms of taxes, healthcare, and treatment.

Drugs should be treated as a public health threat. Not a crime.

not if you don't have taxes, forced healthcare, and forced treatment.

 

[FUCK THE POLICE]

I am a pragmatic liberty-lover...

I believe that people having more liberty would make them happier. However, if I believe that certain things will destroy them, and ulitmately make people less happier, I will not blindly hold onto ideology. The government does have a place. I am not an anarchist.

 

[FUCK THE POLICE]

not if you don't have taxes, forced healthcare, and forced treatment.

A minor isn't in a position to choose his healthcare, because he/she is not mentally developed yet. A parent encouraging their children to use leaves instead of modern medicine is killing and manipulating their child, and they do not have the right to do so.

 

[Cypress]

not if you don't have taxes, forced healthcare, and forced treatment.

Don't like taxes? Move.

There are plenty of countries who don't have a tax system, or a functioning central government to bug you.

Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Congo.

Take your pick.

 

[FUCK THE POLICE]

Don't like taxes? Move.

There are plenty of countries who don't have a tax system, or a functioning central government to bug you.

Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Congo.

Take your pick.

Oh, don't make that argument. Everyone hates that argument, because whoever's making that argument always chooses irrelevant countries that aren't developed and are extremely extreme.

 

[Damocles]

Jails are absolutely USELESS to control the spread of drugs. We should focus soley on reform, punishment is not something that will work except in moderate amounts.

Punishment will only work if the only people we punish are those who illegally distribute them. The users will be endless. If we keep up this insane "War on Drugs" all we will end up with is 50% of the population standing watch over the other 50% in prison.

 

[BRUTALITOPS]

Don't like taxes? Move.

There are plenty of countries who don't have a tax system, or a functioning central government to bug you.

Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Congo.

Take your pick.

how republican of you. how many times have you gotten the "like it or leave it speech cypress?"

how about YOU get the fuck out of this country and move to canada? then YOU can have your universal healthcare and you dont have to force it on the rest of us.

 

[Cypress]

Oh, don't make that argument. Everyone hates that argument, because whoever's making that argument always chooses irrelevant countries that aren't developed and are extremely extreme.

Name one successful country that follows the extreme libertarian model, doesn't have a viable taxes, and has a weak and irrelevant central government.

 

[Cypress]

how republican of you. how many times have you gotten the "like it or leave it speech cypress?"

how about YOU get the fuck out of this country and move to canada? then YOU can have your universal healthcare and you dont have to force it on the rest of us.

LOL