2) The whole "Drug War" thing. Look, my limited knowledge of libertarianism is limited to Neil Boortz and a little of Harry Browne. <snip> I know that the argument for legalization is valid. But so is the argument against legalization; I am not so convinced that it is a "victimless crime."
It might be easier to understand the FSP's views on the drug war by looking at the history of Prohibition.
Not just the Prohibition was a failure and repealed, but that
just 70 years ago people who thought that alcohol was evil and wanted to ban it
knew that the only Constitutional way of doing so was to pass an amendment to the Constitution, authorizing the government the powers to control alcohol.
Then take a look at the amendment itself: It says nothing whatsoever about
use, only manufacture, transportation, and sale. Even those who wanted to ban alcohol completely
didn’t believe that they had the right to regulate what you, personally, consumed – only whether it was sold to you.
Only 40 years or so later, the Government declared “war†on drugs. If they needed a Constitutional amendment in the 1930’s, where did they acquire the rightful authority 40 years later?
And without the rightful authority to declare this “war,†against the American people as individuals, how is it that they spend billions of dollars a year “fighting†it?
I’m all for a “War on Drugs†–
just as soon as that Prohibition on Drugs amendment is passed in a Constitutional manner, and ratified by the requisite number of States. [I’m not all for it philosophically, but that’s a different story.]
In the free state that the FSP proposes, we would merely be returning the government to its Constitutional boundaries on any number of issues. After all, there are any number of “wonderful†things that might be [theoretically] accomplished passing a law against this or that, or the other thing, but there are a very limited number of things that
our government is actually authorized to do.
If you think, as I do, that the Founding Fathers had a pretty good handle on what was necessary to achieve freedom, then perhaps you may have to let go of some laws that may seems like a nifty idea to you, but that the government was never supposed to control in the first place.
Dex }:>=-
P.S. You might also consider that the wonderful legacy of Teddy Kennedy, and the whole rest of Kennedy clan, was made possible by the vast fortunes the family made smuggling illegal alcohol - during Prohibition.
