Posted by
ROK on Wednesday, September 30, 2009 1:17:51 PM
“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. “
George Orwell
Why?! Why?! Why?!
One of the most frequently used words in every language, in every age, in every home, every business, and every educational institution. It isn't a bad word, doesn't even have four letters, but it is often treated as such. For example, "Why do you still believe the earth is flat?" OFF WITH HIS HEAD!!!!
The problem today is we don't hear enough of this word. We don't question enough the people we trust as leaders and we don't ask WHY?! When we see one failing government program after another we don’t ask WHY?! Not why is it failing? But why are we still letting the government do something that it has consistently shown it is incompetent to do. We used to ask why.
Earlier in the last century we allowed the government to sell us on the idea of Prohibition. Many could agree then that alcohol was a source of a great many problems and contributed to marital failures, business failures, obviously drunkenness, violence, indolence, illness, etc. It wasn't really that hard to sell the notion of outlawing something that had so many negative features and only a few positive features. So they outlawed it. To their credit, and in relatively short order, the people saw the organized crime, extreme violence associated with turf wars, property crimes by users to pay for product, enormous numbers incarcerated for manufacturing, selling or using the product, as being a case in which the cure was far worse than the illness.
They scrapped prohibition after only a few years. They generally took it away from government except for minor regulations and taxes. For a short while most of the crime and other problems associated with prohibition did go away. There is a Humphrey Bogart movie in which one gangster tells another gangster that he has heard Prohibition is coming back. They are both encouraged by the prospect. In fact, an honest assessment of prohibition today could only conclude that the era of prohibition had two beneficiaries, criminals made a killing, and government grasped at and consolidated much power at the expense of the people. So organized crime and the government, two sides of the same coin benefited the most.
Yes, government as we have it is a form of Organized Crime.
The end of prohibition did represent a considerable loss to organized crime. They had to find some other sources of revenue. Now when a business finds that one of its product lines is no longer viable it finds or creates an alternate product line to fill the void or suffers the consequences. Organized crime IS a business. There had already been an effort to eliminate gambling in many states and of course this offered them a revenue stream and they had been selling it through the same distribution network as alcohol. So they had the channel, they just needed a product to dump in the pipe. At this time there were few in America using marijuana, cocaine, or heroin. There weren't many using TV's, credit cards or cell phones either. That is marketing, take a product, new or obscure and convince as many as possible that they simple must have it. It’s genius.
In comes the federal government too. They needed something to justify keeping all of the power they had accumulated as part of prohibition. Ban drugs and the problem’s solved. It worked better than Prohibition because it targeted a much smaller percentage of the population and thus would be easier to sell and maintain.
So BANG, a War on Drugs. If there is one message we can take away from the war on drugs it is this, Prohibition was for beginners.
We accept too damned many things on the explanations of people who could have good reasons for lying. Frank Herbert
How they banned it was both humorous and ridiculous, like most everything else the government does. The congress at one point had an expert testify concerning marijuana. He testified that when he smoked marijuana he turned into a bat. I know a number of people that have tried or do smoke marijuana and I have never heard of anyone saying it caused this type of delusional vision. In fact, the most likely effects I have personally noticed in users are; they laugh a lot at stupid things, they eat a lot of stupid things and they don't seem to be very motivated. Clearly the "expert" was lying and the reason the lie worked was in part the unfamiliarity the general public had with marijuana. Not very many had used it. Contrast that with today where the majority have not only tried pot but a great many have tried other drugs as well. Comedy is how congress starts; tragedy is usually how it ends and thus has gone the War on Drugs.
The question for us today is WHY?! Why do we continue to support what is obviously a complete failure by any reasonable definition? More people use drugs today as a percentage of the population than ever did before they were outlawed. In fact, the drug war has caused at least a 600% per capita increase in drug use. In 1900, in small towns all across America, a person looking to buy heroin would most likely not be able to find anybody selling it. If he did, it would likely have been a pharmacist who may have refused to sell it. Not because it was illegal but because he knew Joe, and his wife and children, and didn't think Joe needed to have any more of that stuff and there wasn't enough profit in it to convince him to sell his soul.
Who was the pot dealer in America in 1900? There wasn't one.
Not so today, through the genius of "War on Drugs" marketing and a solid distribution network, it is unlikely that any person desiring to purchase heroin, coke, dope, meth, whatever his little addicted heart could desire, would have any difficulty whatsoever finding someone to sell it to him in a city, town or village across the country. In fact, men under armed guard in maximum security prisons can get the drug of their choice.
So the War on Drugs is a complete failure? Not really, it did exactly what it was supposed to do. The failure was in the American public's understanding of the purpose of the War on Drugs. Organized crime has turned enormous profits and the government has accumulated vast powers that directly violate the rights recognized in the constitution. Trying to get a significant number of Americans to raise a cry to congress to stop this tragic farce is practically impossible because few remember what it was like before and the government paints a much darker picture than ever existed. They speak of an overwhelming crime wave that would occur if we legalized drugs. Common sense shows that much of the current crime “wave” occurred as a result of the War on Drugs. Nearly all of the violence, theft, prostitution, property crime, etc which is committed today is committed to support a drug habit or defend drug turf that did not exist before those drugs were outlawed and they would in large part disappear if we just called the whole thing off.
The undeserving maintain power by promoting hysteria.
Frank Herbert
The Drug War is not the only tragicomedy that begs the question, WHY?!
The War on Poverty came at a time when poverty was rapidly declining in America. It now represents a clear line when the decline in poverty ceased. Year after year the plight of the poor had gotten better and then we started the War on Poverty. The result we have seen inner cities literally collapse. As much as ninety percent of children born in the inner city have no father, half will never finish school, a third or more of the male population will serve time in prison, they have suffered more than any other group from the War on Drugs both in terms of addiction and legal ramifications. This so called War on Poverty can only be described as a failure. That is if we assume the perspective of normal commonsense Americans.
If the purpose is to empower government and enrich organized crime it has been a thing to admire in its execution, government sends in billions to people who rapidly come to expect it as a right and spend it as though it cost nothing. It does cost them nothing after all. Much of what they spend is on various illegal drugs and organized crime turns a handsome profit. The devastation of an entire race of people, the destruction of some of the greatest cities ever built and the obliteration of so much freedom, consigning so many to a life of misery and slavery to both government handouts and mind altering drugs. It would have been easier and less harmful to give the money directly to the mobsters.
Then we have the War on Terror. It is a little different since one can hardly sanction terror or even the ignoring of terror. But you would think that terrorism was somehow new or special to the modern era the way it is treated. It isn't. It has been around for thousands of years. There are examples of terroristic activities going back as far as recorded history. Viking, Mongols, Huns, Visigoths. Terrorism has been around so long because for the most part it works. Look at the way the average American today cowers behind ESOL TSA stooges as though people born without freedom are now the guardians thereof. What has changed for America is how we deal with it, although we are not the first to make the mistake of treating it as other than an act of war.
Thomas Jefferson showed the right way to deal with Islamic terrorists in the form of the pirates of the Barbary Coast. Shell them, sink them and capture their cities. He did screw up in the sense of paying a ransom for POW's at the end of it. That probably led us back there 10 years later to finish the job. But it was a good start. And most importantly it established the principle of never treating with a terrorist if you really want peace.
It should be noted as well of Jefferson or Madison neither one built any nations for the Barbary Pirates. Jefferson started and Madison finished teaching a lesson that lasted a long time, don't screw with us and we won’t destroy you. Reagan carried on this proud tradition when he unleashed on Tripoli for its renewed role in terrorism. That led to shutting them down again.
Some have used this as an example of how even Jefferson ignored the constitutional requirement for congress to declare war but not so. In fact in all three cases, Jefferson, Madison and Reagan acted against a foreign power that was actively engaged in attacking Americans. None of the three prosecuted the military actions to the point of complete conquest of a foreign nation but instead until the aggressors capitulated and agreed to leave Americans alone. When we act in this manner towards aggressors/terrorist we get real results.
Think back to the early days of our current war in Iraq, before it became a nation building effort, every terrorist nation on the planet suddenly wanted to talk peace with the US from Libya, Iran, Syria to N Korea, even China became conciliatory. It wasn't until we foolishly got ourselves bogged down in Iraq and to some degree in Afghanistan that all of the belligerents started acting nasty again. We need to understand we have no business playing nation builder to any belligerent. Terrorist nations are like criminals and after we punish them in war we should not embark on a costly effort to show them how to be good corporate citizens. We need to make sure the punishment is such that they never want to do "that" again. If they don't seem to feel that way, then we didn't do our job right. Next time we do it better.
Most nations in history that gave thought to belligerence and war had to calculate the risks and the rewards and then make a decision about whether the risks are justified in light of the potential rewards. Losing a war literally could mean losing your nation’s independence or significant parts of your territory or an irreplaceable share of your treasury. The deliberations of today's nations probably more closely resembles, "Well the risk's are ‘the American's are generous’ and the rewards are ‘the Americans are generous’.” Kind of like the movie "The Mouse That Roared." Here the Peter Sellers character is a sadistic killer who would gladly sacrifice his own children for the slightest advantage.
Soon it would appear we will be subjected to another war this one a “War on Carbon.” Being that we are carbon based life forms that would make us at war with ourselves. Sort of funny, except they are serious. We need to be asking WHY?!
I have seen the enemy and he is us?
Pogo
They speak as though the "science" is settled. Then some idiot climatologist comes out, seems like most climatologists at this point, and delivers real science that tells us global warming is either far from settled or completely unfounded. But the hysterics in favor of global warming, (I say "in favor of" because they really have invested so much in it they are disappointed more than relieved that the earth won’t be getting destroyed), just get that much more hysterical. As we have seen, they seem to have the ear of idiot politicians, who aren't too stupid to see another tax or power grab opportunity.
Without getting heavily into the science here I would point out a couple of things:
1. Earth's climate has always changed.
2. When Mars is also undergoing global warming or cooling or "climate change" in pace with what we experience here on Earth we can be sure it isn't anymore manmade here than it is there.
3. When the earth warms, during natural warming trends, the areas that actually warm are primarily the areas farthest from the equator. This means the land area that can support normal human life actually expands. The areas that support crop growth expand and more people can be fed. And what do plants eat? Carbon.
If global warming had any truth to it at all, that truth is this; more people will be fed, fewer people will freeze to death and excess carbon will be absorbed by the greater biomass if there is an abundance of CO2 in the air.
Of course recently the phrase has been changed to "climate change" but the truth is we have nothing to fear except greedy power hungry politicians. Like every con artist they change their con when they realize the old one isn't working anymore.
If you don't want to be conned ask yourself one question "Does the solution require me to give more power to the government?" if the answer is yes, you are being conned. Don't be conned.
Ask … Why? Say no.