Actually, drug users typically harm others as well as themselves, beginning with abuse or neglect of their family members and others in their lives.

DLS,

Wouldn’t it make more sense to criminalize abuse or neglect rather than drug use itself?

People who drink alcohol are responsible for thousands of drunk driving deaths each year. However, we don’t criminalize alcohol use just because a minority of alcohol users drink and drive and cause automobile accidents that claim lives.

If you truly hate the Nanny State, DLS, then you ought to be against the War on Drugs, which is basically the Nanny State on steroids.

Just wait until SWAT teams break into people’s homes to arrest anyone smoking a cigarette. Using the perverse “it’s for your own good and for the good of society” logic of the War on Drugs, it’s only a matter of time until cigarette smokers are targetted.

Then again, Congress receives quite a bit of money from the tobacco lobby. You’d better believe that if there had been a marijuana lobby back in the 1930′s, marijuana would be legal today.

The idea that drug users are committing a crime because they are inflicting harm upon themselves is ridiculous.

Actually, drug users typically harm others as well as themselves, beginning with abuse or neglect of their family members and others in their lives.

That’s one area where I side with authority (or compulsion) over liberty, too; these behaviors frequently are not victimless.

A number of victimless crimes that people claim are not victimless, truly are victimless.

Second-hand smoke is a perfect example. People are always arguing that banning smoking in restaurants is justified on the basis that second-hand smoke harms people.

Second-hand smoke certainly does harm people. But no one forced the “victim” to enter the restaurant in which smoking was allowed.

Someone who inhales second-hand smoke in a restaurant that permits smoking is no more a victim than a than a person who gets tackled in a football game in which tackling is permitted.

In other words, one cannot be a victim if they are knowingly subjecting themselves to an activity that it permitted in a particular environment.

On another point, a real “crime” is one in which the perpertrator and the victim are two different people. The idea that drug users are committing a crime because they are inflicting harm upon themselves is ridiculous. That would be like arguing that eating fast food on a daily basis is a crime on the basis that they are inflicting harm upon themselves.

In a free society, people must take responsibility for their own actions–whether they are choosing to engage in an unhealthy activity or whether they are willingly entiring environments where unhealthy activities are permitted. It is not the government’s job to decide that people are endangering their own health and then punishing them as criminals.

This isn’t an argument that the ends Nanny Stater are trying to achieve are wrong. It’s the means they employ that is wrong

.

He addresses the ends, or end, as well — that the concept of government is beyond a true government and has become a service agency is not enough — what is sought is government as a surrogate parent, as if it really were a nanny:

But what we’re doing is creating a nation of dependents. Not just as far as welfare programs go, but as far as people believing that government should always protect them, from Katrina all the way down to a kid playing tag. And it’s dangerous.

* * *

If it’s wrong to make a sweeping generalization about the absolute necessity of starting from a position of upholding personal liberty, and maintaining checks on the govt’s authority to limit it, then I stand guilty of that charge. My position is that this should always be the starting point, and if we make exceptions to grant authority to the govt over our personal liberties, we ought to be very aware that we’re doing so and we ought to have broad support for the idea that it’s a necessity to do so.

In most cases, I’d come down closer to the liberty side,

Me, too. It’s the basic libertarian character of this country and of Americans, an English heritage. The burden of proof normally is and must be on government and proponents to justify what is proposed that government do. That is a sound general principle, not a “sweeping assertion” [sic].

but I think libertarians tend to be too pure on that in insisting that poor behavioral choices are purely victimless crimes.

That’s one area where I side with authority (or compulsion) over liberty, too; these behaviors frequently are not victimless.

I’m with you in principle, as to the starting point of personal liberty to make even bad choices. But then the arguments begin, and each should be weighed on it’s own merits and the ‘societal interest’ in prohibiting or regulating a behavior should be weighed against the interest of individuals in limiting the government’s authority. In most cases, I’d come down closer to the liberty side, but I think libertarians tend to be too pure on that in insisting that poor behavioral choices are purely victimless crimes.

This isn’t an argument that the ends Nanny Stater are trying to achieve are wrong. It’s the means they employ that is wrong.

Few people would deny that we’d be better off if we didn’t smoke cigarettes, drink excessive amounts of alcohol, eat excessive amounts of fatty foods, or refuse to wear seat belts when driving. No one is disagreeing with the idea that convincing others to live healthier lives is a noble thing to do.

But when you pass laws against such things, you are resorting to the use of force rather than the power of persuasion. That is what government is…force. The government doesn’t make suggestions about how you should live your lives. It passes laws that are backed up by the implicit use of force.

When you pass a law saying that people can’t smoke in restaraunts, you’re basically arguing that if anyone smokes in a restaraunt, you’re willing to have the state fine or imprison these people for not living their lives the way you insist they do.

Nanny state laws are laws that make criminals out of people who commit victimless acts. Such laws infringe on our civil liberties and are fraught with unintended consequences because they are prosecuted by a bunch of government bureacrats–many of whom have far less common sense that you or I.

Perhaps the worst example of the Nanny State gone wrong is our government’s War on Drugs.

When a government is so bent on reducing drug use that it is willing to send SWAT teams into people’s houses to prevent them from using drugs in the privacy of their own homes (and occasionally bursting into the homes of innocent people), you know that government is out of control.

Libertarians are despicable, soulless people with no moral compass. They behave like rebelious adolescents. I would take religious conservatives over them anytime. At least they have convictions and concern themselves with issues of greater import than monetary values.

That’s got to be one of the most thoughtless posts I’ve come across at TMV in a long while (or at least since LL’s previous comment). What if we all did what you did, LL, and label all liberals as “despicable, soulless people with no moral compass” or all conservatives as “despicable, soulless people with no moral compass”? Is that any way to conduct an intelligent debate?

Your post is factually inaccurate. Libertarians are not necessarily libertines. Libertarianism is a philosophy about what one believes the government should be empowered to do–not how one should live one’s life.

There are a number of libertarians who abstain from drinking, smoking, drugs, and other illicit activities but don’t think the government should impose laws that others should be forced to do the same.

Also, the idea that libertarians have no convictions is laughable. If anything, it’s the perception that libertarians adhere too strongly to their principles (pursuing a purist ideology) that turns people off of libertarianism.

If it’s wrong to make a sweeping generalization about the absolute necessity of starting from a position of upholding personal liberty, and maintaining checks on the govt’s authority to limit it, then I stand guilty of that charge. My position is that this should always be the starting point, and if we make exceptions to grant authority to the govt over our personal liberties, we ought to be very aware that we’re doing so and we ought to have broad support for the idea that it’s a necessity to do so.

And when you argue that health concerns are a matter of economic concern (presumably arguing that moral values are not- correct me if I’m misinterpreting that), I’d disagree (with the latter part that I’m inferring- again, feel free to correct if that’s not what you were saying). Moral values can be every bit as economically relevant in terms of family structure being conducive to better economic conditions, for example.

Health issues are primarily a matter of national concern in terms of how to keep to country going economically and practically. The moral aspect may be a selling point for some, but it would not fly on its own, unless if it wasn’t driven by economic soncerns.
Making health equivaent to concerns about pronogrhphy, is, well, pronographic.

What sweeping statements?

Debasement of individual values
Erosion of personal liberty
Jesus didn’t promote the use of government to meet sodial justice goals (did he warn against government intrusion?)

My point: keep generalized assertions about motives out of it. Talk about a specific issue in specific terms.

The reason you can argue it either way is that the values Christ proclaimed are compatible with many of the goals of the liberal agenda (social justice) but he didn’t promote the use of government to meet those goals. In fact, He was pretty emphatic in that His kingdom was of the next world, not this one, and He avoided the trap that was laid for him in the question of taxation. When he said to “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”, I don’t hear Him saying that we should expect Caesar to feed the lambs with the coins we render unto Him- that charge was asked of us as individuals, to take care of our brethren.

The argument is wrong from the gitgo if it insists on interpreting everything in terms of morals. Mrore often, proposals are attempts to solve a problem in the most pragmetic way possible.

The argument is also wrong to ring alarm bells about signing rights away in ominous tones without specifying exactly what rights are in danger in a particular case.

Certainly we should be careful.
We should also be careful of being so careful that we become unable to move while a speeding train is barreling down on us.

Making these kind of sweeping political generalizations creates a smokescreen preventing the realistic evaluation of any and all propositions
If we’re not careful, it can become just another political ploy.

I don’t think that an absurdity of extension can, at the same time, be a logical (in the sense of denoting ‘rational’) exentsion. It can, I will grant, be an absurd exageration to serve as a warning against extremes. That’s a different concept, however, and I am bending over backwars to read the rest of the comment in that light. It did continue in the same absurdly exagerated vein, in spite of protestations to the contrary.

The best way to avoid extremes is to pay attention to particulars.
If drug laws need reform, let’s talk about reforming drug laws without sweeping other, unrelated, laws into the same basket.
If individual liberties are threatened, let’s talk about which liberties those are instead of claiming that all liberties are threatened.
If leaving an issue up to the states is the proposed solution, let’s look at how that would would work out in the particular instance instead of claiming that leaving everything for states to determine is the only way to preserve federalism.

BTW, I can’t resust the following to counter ominous warnings about slippery slopes:
Driving at 5 mph one morning does not mean that you will inevitably be led to drive 150 mph every day for the rest of your life.

Trent Lott was quite eloquent in a speech on a related subject. He spoke about the need to get out in the world to become familiar with the variety among people and their ideas. It’s good medicine to prevent extremes in thought as well as in action.