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Legalize It All

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Re: Legalize It All

#151

Post by [deleted] »

md224 wrote: post #132
krylon wrote: post #3

We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course…

Does anyone else get almost irrationally angry about this? I HATE that the freedom to modulate our own minds was taken away from us by these awful politicians for such terrible reasons. Not only has the War on Drugs ruined countless lives through incarceration and overdosing, but so many potentially helpful chemicals have been hidden away from society. It isn't just about getting "high"... it's about unleashing our f…

[deleted]

Re: Legalize It All

#152

Post by cpr »

munificent wrote: post #125
charonn0 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a counterpoint to the drug war: a durable, decades-long intrusion on personal autonomy by the state that produces tangible benefits and improves the quality of life for society and the individual.

Free mass education is a requirement in a democratic society. It would be national suicide for a government to give people the vote without giving them any competence to go with it.

Except that the free mass schools provided by the government do little more than dumb people down to a compliant level required for a quiet electorate.

See "Dumbing Us Down" by John Taylor Gatto. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumbing_Us_Down

Re: Legalize It All

#153

Post by narrator »

mikeash wrote: post #128
narrator wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stalin was by all accounts a dictator, but he operated differently. When the NKVD secret police would arrest someone who had made a political joke that somebody heard and reported, they weren't sent to freeze to death in a gulag in Siberia for the joke. No, they were forced to confess under torture to all sorts of laundry lists of ridiculous accusations of sabotaging production and acting as a spy for foreign governm…

> Kind of funny statistic, but the U.S has more people incarcerated as a percentage of the population than the Soviet Union ever did. Is that true? The number of Americans in prison is somewhat over two million. It's hard to find numbers for the USSR, but the conservative number I was able to find for the peak of the gulag system in 1950 is about 2.5 million, and that's out of a population a little over half the size…

Here's the source:

http://www.sott.net/article/300679-American-Gulag-US-has-mor...

Re: Legalize It All

#154

Post by stegosaurus »

The idea that the Western world (at least, my country, the UK) uses laws to criminalize groups of people seems about as old as time itself to me.

We don't punish drug use because we care about people taking drugs. We punish drug use because we want to eliminate the influence of 'junkies' on society.

We don't punish radical views because we disagree with them. We punish radical views because we want to eliminate their influence on society.

Let's talk about child abuse. A terrible crime.

As a UK resident - it feels to me, that people don't actually care about the actual act of child abuse as much as they care about the... 'othering' of the perpetrator.

It's the idea of a child abuser as being an animal, a strange alien, a completely non-understandable beast, that really riles us up.

That's why 'think of the children' works. We're not thinking about the children, really. We're thinking about the threat from human actors who don't have world-views that quite fit - we can't grok them, they can't be trusted.

That's what I think these sorts of laws are fundamentally about. They are about trying to remove 'scary' individuals.

I don't care about terrorism because I think it's vanishingly unlikely to occur. But people, as a mass, fear the unknown - they fear the humans who don't have the same limits that they do. The humans that can, and will, do anything.

'Terrorist' is just the new 'criminal', because 'criminal' doesn't hold the same cachet when everyone is a criminal.

Re: Legalize It All

#155

Post by hyperpape »

hartpuff wrote: post #144
hyperpape wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. However judges cannot preemptively strike down laws, even if they are blatantly unconstitutional. Someone with "standing" must bring a case, which typically(?) means that the law has been applied to them. So unconstitutional laws often stay on the books without being enforced, until either someone overreaches and tries to enforce them, or the legislature formally repeals them. I believe anti-miscegenation statue…

I just read about something like that recently, a couple being thrown into jail in the US in the 1960s , for the 'crime' of being married and of being different races. Edit: My mistake, it was 1958, but they took legal action in the 1960s (Loving vs Virginia, 1967), and despite the Supreme Court's ruling, some states kept such laws on the books as late as 2000 (Alabama), which is actually probably what you were refer…

Loving vs Virginia in 1967: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia

Re: Legalize It All

#156

Post by [deleted] »

Terr_ wrote: post #52
narrator wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing I find interesting (INTERESTING, not necessarily moral or otherwise) about China is that when they want to do something controversial they are open and straight forward about it. They openly attack and arrest groups that they find disruptive to the social order. In America, the leadership has to invent all sorts of crafty subterfuge to accomplish their goals of persecuting and imprisoning groups that they c…

> The thing I find interesting (INTERESTING, not necessarily moral or otherwise) about China is that when they want to do something controversial they are open and straight forward about it. Not necessarily, or they wouldn't need to coerce apologetic confessions: http://www.economist.com/news/china/21689620-what-current-vo...

[deleted]

Re: Legalize It All

#157

Post by mikeash »

narrator wrote: post #153
mikeash wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kind of funny statistic, but the U.S has more people incarcerated as a percentage of the population than the Soviet Union ever did. Is that true? The number of Americans in prison is somewhat over two million. It's hard to find numbers for the USSR, but the conservative number I was able to find for the peak of the gulag system in 1950 is about 2.5 million, and that's out of a population a little over half the size…

Here's the source: http://www.sott.net/article/300679-American-Gulag-US-has-mor...

That's quite different, talking about the total number of people who have ever been through the system, and not accounting for total population.

Re: Legalize It All

#158

Post by mwsherman »

It will be a very interesting study for future generations, should we substantially legalize recreational drugs, on all of the follow-on effects.

For example, many categories of police activity (raids, traffic stops) will become harder to justify; the dollar cost of drugs going down by an order of magnitude; immigration enforcement.

Re: Legalize It All

#159

Post by pstuart »

itsgreene wrote: post #90
krylon wrote: post #3

We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course…

I want to disagree a little on this. I won't disagree that the 'war on drugs' is out of control, largely mismanaged, and likely unnecessary. What I do want to say is I think it's a bit unfair to say "It never was about fighting drug use or preventing the harm it can do." I think it's fair to say the funding and huge catalyst for the war on drugs started in Miami in the 80's. During this time where was a ridiculous am…

The violence wasn't from drug users, it was from gangs fighting over profits from illegal trade. The war created that violence in the first place.

As another commenter noted, the parallel would be the rise of organized crime during alcohol prohibition.

Re: Legalize It All

#160

Post by hartpuff »

hyperpape wrote: post #155
hartpuff wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just read about something like that recently, a couple being thrown into jail in the US in the 1960s , for the 'crime' of being married and of being different races. Edit: My mistake, it was 1958, but they took legal action in the 1960s (Loving vs Virginia, 1967), and despite the Supreme Court's ruling, some states kept such laws on the books as late as 2000 (Alabama), which is actually probably what you were refer…

Loving vs Virginia in 1967: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia

Yeah, I looked it up after I posted (probably should have done it the other way around), but thanks.
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