I'm watching a History Channel doc about drug use in the United States during the late 1800s and early 1900s.
During that period, both cocaine and opiates were readily available and widely consumed in this country. They were prescribed by doctors to cure ailments and taken for recreation by a wide range of Americans, from poor black youths to wealthy, middle age white women. They could be found in pharmacies and obtained through the mail.
Did society fall apart? No. There were coke and opiate addicts, sure, but there are coke and opiate addicts now, too. That's an unchanging problem, one attributable to enduring aspects of our flawed nature.
However, the menace of gang violence was virtually nonexistent, because drugs were mainstream and legal, distributed by companies and medical professionals. If we returned to that model (but with more government oversight), we would cure -- or at least greatly diminish -- a national scourge.
The legalization and regulation of all drugs, from marijuana to LSD to heroin, would reduce crime and minimize fatalities associated with dirty product. It would be a boon for poor minorities, whose cultures are deeply rooted in the drug trade, and who would surely take quickly to its legal manifestation, too.
It's hard to say if addiction rates would increase, though I wouldn't be surprised if they did. However, addiction to certain hard drugs is not as bad as it is often made out to be. It is a misunderstood condition. Opiate addiction, for instance, is much easier managed than alcoholism: A junkie rises early, goes to bed early, and is fairly level and clearheaded -- provided he has his fix. Cocaine users are more erratic, yet they too can typically function on-point so long as they have access to their sweet powder. Legalization would lower prices through open competition and the end of certain risk-costs, and make every fix just around the corner.
Widespread addiction is a troubling prospect, but last time opiates and cocaine were legal, society survived just fine. We should have a little more faith in people, a little less complacency about the state's unnecessary, immoral repression of natural urges and natural flora.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Sex in Public
Rod Dreher, channeling Wendell Berry, declares, “you cannot have a workable order as long as both economic and sexual decisions are wholly privatized.”
Isn't this exactly why it’s so important for same-sex marriage to be fleshed out in the public square, heartily explained to folks, and instituted democratically on a state by state basis?
As I see it, the old sexual order—with its whispers, discretion, euphemisms, and rigid tradition-defined categories/boundaries—was far more “privatized” than the new one.
Now, sexuality is discussed frankly. Today, we openly manipulate mores to suit our tastes and needs. There is, if anything, a total lack of the private: Everything, from marriage to masturbation, is public domain material, stuff dealt with by teachers and TV show hosts and everyone in between.
Dreher is totally wrong in suggesting that we’ve “privatized” sex, when in reality the individual has never been so sidelined. Once, sexuality was a bedroom matter. People were limited in their wisdom and options by a lack of overt social interest in the matter. In 2009, sex is in the boardroom, the cloak room, the classroom, the news/media room, and beyond.
We are experiencing the socialization of sex, not its privatization, carried out by liberal and conservative alike, both of whom mistrust the moral decision making capacity of the individual and the family, both of whom think collectivization is the only efficient means of ensuring a stable social order.
Whether this impulse is good or bad I don't know, and I've never known anything else, but it seems to me the case.
Isn't this exactly why it’s so important for same-sex marriage to be fleshed out in the public square, heartily explained to folks, and instituted democratically on a state by state basis?
As I see it, the old sexual order—with its whispers, discretion, euphemisms, and rigid tradition-defined categories/boundaries—was far more “privatized” than the new one.
Now, sexuality is discussed frankly. Today, we openly manipulate mores to suit our tastes and needs. There is, if anything, a total lack of the private: Everything, from marriage to masturbation, is public domain material, stuff dealt with by teachers and TV show hosts and everyone in between.
Dreher is totally wrong in suggesting that we’ve “privatized” sex, when in reality the individual has never been so sidelined. Once, sexuality was a bedroom matter. People were limited in their wisdom and options by a lack of overt social interest in the matter. In 2009, sex is in the boardroom, the cloak room, the classroom, the news/media room, and beyond.
We are experiencing the socialization of sex, not its privatization, carried out by liberal and conservative alike, both of whom mistrust the moral decision making capacity of the individual and the family, both of whom think collectivization is the only efficient means of ensuring a stable social order.
Whether this impulse is good or bad I don't know, and I've never known anything else, but it seems to me the case.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Bullshit
Abraham Lincoln destroyed American democracy, but Jack Kemp thinks he saved it.
And, imagine, that’s one of the less foolish notions floated in this, Kemp’s latest and last column. (I hate to slight the departed, but it’s all so dreadful!)
Kemp is one of those masqueraders who calls himself conservative while preaching the most radical and revolutionary Jacobin garbage. The daring of these people, really. Only in a nation totally politically illiterate—only in a nation like this—could so much nonsense go on with so few people calling BS.
And, imagine, that’s one of the less foolish notions floated in this, Kemp’s latest and last column. (I hate to slight the departed, but it’s all so dreadful!)
Kemp is one of those masqueraders who calls himself conservative while preaching the most radical and revolutionary Jacobin garbage. The daring of these people, really. Only in a nation totally politically illiterate—only in a nation like this—could so much nonsense go on with so few people calling BS.
Specter: Red (White and Blue) Tory
Specter has little regard for parties and movements. He is a man who serves the people, a man of, for, and by them. He votes the interests of Pennsylvania. He votes the interests of the United States. He has no need and no desire to flatter the theory-driven assumptions of a particular creed.
These things render him a rarity in the tedious world of American politics, a world full of tiny crooks and cranks who want nothing more than to be part of a crowd. The right crowd, preferably, but really any will do.
Specter is a different creature. He stands on his own two feet. He follows no program. He takes issues one at a time, evaluating them honestly, without ideological prejudgment.
For this fair and measured, pragmatic and solutions-oriented disposition, he is loathed by conservatives and distrusted by liberals. It is proof of our degenerate state that independence of thought is today scorned rather than seen for what it truly is: A virtue supreme.
I place Specter within the Red Tory tradition, a distressingly, depressingly quiet strain of American conservatism. Like any good Red Tory, Specter proves that one can be conservative without being right wing.
The senator is protective of the “little guy.” His conservatism, which is deeply paternal, grows from this impulse. He is a partisan of the middle class, as it exists along Main Street, not in pristine corporate suburbs.
Unlike the right wing radicals who now dominate Republicanism, his conservatism is—surprise, surprise—actually about conserving. Specter champions the midcentury socioeconomic consensus that led America to the top. He is sympathetic to labor, socially tolerant without being mindlessly progressive, friendly to matters of personal freedom (from guns to abortion), convinced that the market exists for people and must be manipulated to serve the common good.
The bailout highlights his Tory tendencies. In propping up the companies, Specter was not supporting government interference so much as he was supporting social order. The left-conservative seeks continuum and guards the status quo. He abhors large, sudden change because it tends to uproot, overturn, and otherwise harmfully effect ordinary people.
Ordinary people are Specter’s people. He is their gray tribune.
Specter is an awkward fit in either party because he has managed to reconcile what are too often considered utterly disparate impulses.
The hacks hate him because he reveals just how petty and corrupt they are. His refusal to play the game has made him many enemies, but it has earned him a friend in the American people.
Yes, he's a Red Tory: Red, white, and blue.
These things render him a rarity in the tedious world of American politics, a world full of tiny crooks and cranks who want nothing more than to be part of a crowd. The right crowd, preferably, but really any will do.
Specter is a different creature. He stands on his own two feet. He follows no program. He takes issues one at a time, evaluating them honestly, without ideological prejudgment.
For this fair and measured, pragmatic and solutions-oriented disposition, he is loathed by conservatives and distrusted by liberals. It is proof of our degenerate state that independence of thought is today scorned rather than seen for what it truly is: A virtue supreme.
I place Specter within the Red Tory tradition, a distressingly, depressingly quiet strain of American conservatism. Like any good Red Tory, Specter proves that one can be conservative without being right wing.
The senator is protective of the “little guy.” His conservatism, which is deeply paternal, grows from this impulse. He is a partisan of the middle class, as it exists along Main Street, not in pristine corporate suburbs.
Unlike the right wing radicals who now dominate Republicanism, his conservatism is—surprise, surprise—actually about conserving. Specter champions the midcentury socioeconomic consensus that led America to the top. He is sympathetic to labor, socially tolerant without being mindlessly progressive, friendly to matters of personal freedom (from guns to abortion), convinced that the market exists for people and must be manipulated to serve the common good.
The bailout highlights his Tory tendencies. In propping up the companies, Specter was not supporting government interference so much as he was supporting social order. The left-conservative seeks continuum and guards the status quo. He abhors large, sudden change because it tends to uproot, overturn, and otherwise harmfully effect ordinary people.
Ordinary people are Specter’s people. He is their gray tribune.
Specter is an awkward fit in either party because he has managed to reconcile what are too often considered utterly disparate impulses.
The hacks hate him because he reveals just how petty and corrupt they are. His refusal to play the game has made him many enemies, but it has earned him a friend in the American people.
Yes, he's a Red Tory: Red, white, and blue.
Monday, April 20, 2009
For Civilization
"The usage of waterboarding," says Smitty, "could not have been more discriminate while still occurring. This was not wanton mayhem."
KSM was waterboarded 183 times in one month. All things being equal, that's 6 times a day, once every 4 hours, for 30 days straight. Discriminate? Come again, Smitty?
Smitty goes on: "W was granted authorization to engage in WAR, not some pleasant, abstract weekend discourse, oh purveyors of weenie-hood."
Yes, I agree 100%. War is hell, no doubt. But that doesn't give us the freedom to do whatever we please whenever we please to whomever we please.
We are a civilized people. We are a Christian people. (So many conservatives claim the privileges of these mantles, but then refuse the associated responsibilities.) We are the heirs of reason, rationality, rule of law. We are blessed with a heritage of liberal treatment for our fellow men in all but the most dire circumstances.
In the field, with shells falling, I can understand -- even excuse -- almost anything. But in a secure prison totally removed from the random hazards of battle . . . then I expect modern, civilized people to act like modern, civilized people.
Robert Stacy McCain thinks it's cool -- that's the vibe I get, cool -- to act like a damn Third World thug, torturing people for thrill and punishment and, oh yeah, 'information.'
He can reconcile waterboarding and other forms of torture (some of which were definitely worse) with our society. Save for a few highly implausible scenarios, I can't. I don't see how any Christian conservative can.
I read a lot into torture. To my eye, once you start torturing, you quit being civilized, you join the barbarians hacking away at one another. That's all barbarians do: Find reasons or make excuses to draw the blood of their enemies.
Our entire civilization rests on the notions that all people -- not just the few who belong to the immediate polity -- are endowed with dignity, dignity that must be respected, dignity that's protected by a vast shield of laws and rules and mores and norms.
Abandon those standards and you abandon everything. Abandon them and you signal your willingness to live in the chaos of a society governed by men, not laws, where everything is relative and anyone susceptible to the forces of might, rather than right.
Me, I choose to stand for civilization.
KSM was waterboarded 183 times in one month. All things being equal, that's 6 times a day, once every 4 hours, for 30 days straight. Discriminate? Come again, Smitty?
Smitty goes on: "W was granted authorization to engage in WAR, not some pleasant, abstract weekend discourse, oh purveyors of weenie-hood."
Yes, I agree 100%. War is hell, no doubt. But that doesn't give us the freedom to do whatever we please whenever we please to whomever we please.
We are a civilized people. We are a Christian people. (So many conservatives claim the privileges of these mantles, but then refuse the associated responsibilities.) We are the heirs of reason, rationality, rule of law. We are blessed with a heritage of liberal treatment for our fellow men in all but the most dire circumstances.
In the field, with shells falling, I can understand -- even excuse -- almost anything. But in a secure prison totally removed from the random hazards of battle . . . then I expect modern, civilized people to act like modern, civilized people.
Robert Stacy McCain thinks it's cool -- that's the vibe I get, cool -- to act like a damn Third World thug, torturing people for thrill and punishment and, oh yeah, 'information.'
He can reconcile waterboarding and other forms of torture (some of which were definitely worse) with our society. Save for a few highly implausible scenarios, I can't. I don't see how any Christian conservative can.
I read a lot into torture. To my eye, once you start torturing, you quit being civilized, you join the barbarians hacking away at one another. That's all barbarians do: Find reasons or make excuses to draw the blood of their enemies.
Our entire civilization rests on the notions that all people -- not just the few who belong to the immediate polity -- are endowed with dignity, dignity that must be respected, dignity that's protected by a vast shield of laws and rules and mores and norms.
Abandon those standards and you abandon everything. Abandon them and you signal your willingness to live in the chaos of a society governed by men, not laws, where everything is relative and anyone susceptible to the forces of might, rather than right.
Me, I choose to stand for civilization.
McCain's Raging Heart Syndrome
The Other McCain: Dunk 'em again!
Robert Stacy McCain pretends to be this model conservative, yet he's always quick to abandon the belief that separates liberalism from conservatism: Unflinching, unapologetic devotion to the rule of law.
Liberals chafe against the law, which is blind to 'good' or 'bad,' black or white, male or female, and other superficialities and biographical details. Liberals are bleeding hearts, and their emotions get the better of them. They are compelled by sentiment to bend, ignore, overcome any law that they view as oppressive or injurious to black drug dealers, Hispanic border jumpers, whomever.
'Conservatives' of RSM's sort suffer from the opposite of bleeding heart syndrome. Call it raging heart syndrome: Raw emotions -- fury, hatred, contempt -- overwhelm the afflicted individual, forcing him to discard the liberal, rights based legal framework that has for centuries made us a free and orderly society.
Americans have long been adamant about extending to everyone -- even to monsters like the Nazis -- those basic rights which separate the mature order of the West from the totalitarian whimsy of the Orient. This is not the time to drop that wonderful and most civilized impulse.
I too have had fantasies of butchering our enemies, preferably in public (downtown Manhattan, say, in the footprints of the Trade Towers . . . let the cops and firefighters at 'em first). But that would be giving into the same vile, illiberal, and anti-human spirit that animates Islamists.
All Americans, but especially conservatives, must guard against raging heart syndrome. We must stand by our ancient legal methods and institutions. Torture and this practice of veiled back room 'trials' -- their outcomes all but predetermined -- might be satisfying and vindicating on a primal level. But they're ultimately great betrayals of the very principles that make our country and our civilization worth fighting so damn hard to defend.
Robert Stacy McCain pretends to be this model conservative, yet he's always quick to abandon the belief that separates liberalism from conservatism: Unflinching, unapologetic devotion to the rule of law.
Liberals chafe against the law, which is blind to 'good' or 'bad,' black or white, male or female, and other superficialities and biographical details. Liberals are bleeding hearts, and their emotions get the better of them. They are compelled by sentiment to bend, ignore, overcome any law that they view as oppressive or injurious to black drug dealers, Hispanic border jumpers, whomever.
'Conservatives' of RSM's sort suffer from the opposite of bleeding heart syndrome. Call it raging heart syndrome: Raw emotions -- fury, hatred, contempt -- overwhelm the afflicted individual, forcing him to discard the liberal, rights based legal framework that has for centuries made us a free and orderly society.
Americans have long been adamant about extending to everyone -- even to monsters like the Nazis -- those basic rights which separate the mature order of the West from the totalitarian whimsy of the Orient. This is not the time to drop that wonderful and most civilized impulse.
I too have had fantasies of butchering our enemies, preferably in public (downtown Manhattan, say, in the footprints of the Trade Towers . . . let the cops and firefighters at 'em first). But that would be giving into the same vile, illiberal, and anti-human spirit that animates Islamists.
All Americans, but especially conservatives, must guard against raging heart syndrome. We must stand by our ancient legal methods and institutions. Torture and this practice of veiled back room 'trials' -- their outcomes all but predetermined -- might be satisfying and vindicating on a primal level. But they're ultimately great betrayals of the very principles that make our country and our civilization worth fighting so damn hard to defend.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Forthcoming
An argument for New England
independence and the establishment
of t
he Green Tree Republic.
independence and the establishment
of t
he Green Tree Republic.
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