I touched on the subject of immigration reform in the post on Social Security so I had figured to do a follow up post on immigration, and looked up Ron Paul's position, I found that I completely agreed with everything he said. That does increase his palatability in the general but does not make for an interesting blog post. Ditto Ron Paul's position on Iraq. With over 70% of Americans wanting to bring our troops home, Paul's position is for once positively Mainstream.
And then I read Ron Paul's position on the War On Drugs. And again I agreed, but this issue is, imho, meatier for a real discussion on the theoretical Hillary vs Paul in November question.
The War On (some) Drugs (users) has been a third rail in American politics since Jimmy Carter pledged on the trail to de-criminalize marijuana and found the issue untouchable once he got to Washington. And while it is widely acknowledged by sensible people that the United States' War On Drugs has been a costly failure that has caused far more harm than it has prevented, no politician has ever been willing to go Near this issue.
It's an issue I feel strongly about. Just last night I was sitting at a restaurant table and the name of an old friend who has moved away came up and we recalled how horrible it was when her son was murdered. Her son had been a heroin addict. He had gotten himself clean and had been off the junk for over two years when he was killed soon before he was scheduled to testify against his dealer, which he had been more or less forced to do to keep his own hide out of jail. Let's be clear here. This bright, handsome young man did not die because of drugs. He died because of Prohibition.
My own cousin, who was a number of years younger than me, and who had been a kind of little brother to me at family gatherings through the years died of a drug overdose. And I always felt strongly that if it were not for prohibition, his death would likely have been avoided. Drugs purchased pharmaceutically of a specific and known strength and dosage are much less dangerous than street drugs that may be tainted or 'cut' with who knows what and if unexpectedly purer than expected can cause an accidental overdose. In any case, my argument that my cousin was Not well served by our present system seems incontrovertible, even to those who would argue that in this case it was drug abuse and not Prohibition that killed my sweet, funny cousin.
A part of me is thrilled to see that Ron Paul agrees with me about ending this horrid and destructive 'war' that we will never win and which is largely fought as a cash cow for the prison industrial complex (one of the few true growth industries in Bush America) just as Iraq is primarily a cash cow for the Halliburton wing of the Republican party, regardless of the justification du jour for our misadventure there.
But another part of me strongly suspects that if and when the media comes to feel that they can Not continue to largely ignore Ron Paul they will attack him hard with the soft on drugs, soft on crime meme that the Rove wing of the Republican party often uses successfully against politicians who defy the playbook. And the fact that the Rove wing would be operating via Terry McAwful and the Hillary campaign should not surprise anyone who's been paying attention.
So my questions are-- how long can Ron Paul stay under the media radar on the WOD Third Rail and is there any way he can survive the attack when This story gets its 15 minutes of fame?
6 comments:
sheeeesh I went and Dugg this and I got another post? say what? anyhow I don't agree with R.Pauls stance on wanting to do away with SS. thats mad crazy.
On the drug issue, that is a sad state of affairs. The US government should be working on the issues at home like the "war on drugs" and helping those addicted to become productive members of society instead of throwin away billions in Iraq. man that ticks me off! Charity starts at home, lets HELP our won people!
HB~
Seems to me that you're addressing two different issues here--maybe three.
As far as the impact on Ron Paul's campaign goes, I agree that saying anything except "let's round up all those nasty drug people and keep them away from you" in public is going to backfire and backfire hard. We're too dependent on soundbites for facts and nuances to play well at election time.
Whether or not drugs should be illegal is a separate issue, and then the whole question of who or what killed the people you mention is perhaps a third. I'm loathe to use the phrase "personal responsibility" in today's climate, given that it's been co-opted by radical conservatives who think that if you have enough personal responsibility you'll never have a medical crisis you can't pay for or watch your house wiped out by a hurricane.
Still, I'm bothered by what seems to be an implication that under the "prohibition" you describe, these people have no choice but to use the unregulated, dangerous illegal drugs. Presumably if they're intelligent enough and you believe that we should all have enough autonomy to choose whether to use drugs or not, they're also intelligent and autonomous enough to understand those risks and make their own assessment. The idea that drug laws are responsible for drug deaths seems a bit akin to saying that if a teenager comes home from school and opens the refrigerator looking for coke, sees that there isn't any and so drinks some Vodka instead, his parents forced him to drink Vodka by not having coke on hand. He could have waited. He could have had water. There are choices besides "legal drugs" and "illegal drugs".
Isn't the very definition of an "addiction" a compulsion over which the sufferer has little or no control?
Can some lack of personal ethics or responsibility on the part of the dead people I mentioned be blamed for their behavior and its outcomes? Of course. But I do not believe it is always that simple.
When my young cousin and I would hang and smoke cigarettes and pot in the garage it seemed quite harmless to me and indeed I never got any more involved in illegal drugs than that. Yet for him it was gateway to dead end for me just another room along the way. can part of two people reacting differently to same chemical inputs be blamed on something in the brain chemistry akin to susceptibiity to addiction?
I'm not trying to give anyone a free pass on responsibility but whatever responsibility they bear pales to the brokenness of the system we can not even Talk about trying to fix.
This seems psychotic to me.
Here's the thing, Alan--I agree with you about all of these core points:
-the war on drugs is not accomplishing anything
-the war on drugs is the wrong priority
-jailing drug users is the wrong answer for about a hundred reasons
-everything I just said above would likely to be fatal to a political campaign if spoken aloud
And yet, even with all of those preconceived areas of agreement, I was distracted by the "drug laws kill people" rhetoric. So much so that I had to stop and think consciously about how to separate out the issues to respond to your post. If that happened to me, knowing you and agreeing in advance with many of your core points (and having professional training and experience in breaking down issues and not being distracted by emotional reactions), how is it likely to impact the person who comes in biased against your argument? I suspect that the point about the third rail gets lost entirely in a rant (internal or external) about making excuses for druggies--and that's before we even move on to the people actively looking for an excuse to dismiss what you suggest.
Does that mean you shouldn't make both arguments? Of course not. But maybe the one that's not such an emotional hot button and has the potential to be discussed rationally by all concerned shouldn't be tied to one that's going to ignite a political firestorm if you want the first one to be heard.
Tiffany,
After listening to your perspective and contemplating it a bit, I do see how I could have been more effective by writing a piece that focused strongly on the 'third rail' issue-- the fact that so many recognize the system is broken yet it is impossible to begin a dialog on fixing it. By omitting from that piece anything about legalization or decriminalization or the mourning of my own personal casualties of this 'war', the piece might have had more impact, particularly with, as you say, readers not inclined to agree with the points you mentioned.
And leave the other two subjects for other essays directed at other audiences. (A piece mourning the casualties that spent the first three graphs making you know them and sorry they're dead followed by closer that vaguely makes the claim might even do well with the drug warrior mindsets, come to think)
It does make a lot of sense and will certainly inform my future efforts to talk about these issues.
The thought I am left with now and one I think many bloggers will struggle with at times, is that for all of the edit buttons and instant update features, there really aren't any more do-overs in blogging than in more traditional publishing.
Just as Time, Inc. would not be able to recall a batch of magazines that had been distributed because they realized the next day that there was a much better approach, there is little if any chance of attracting back the buzz and new readers I got from this post yesterday and imho it would not be wise to revisit the issue on this blog again too soon, so the benefit of separating the issues will accrue elsewhere. But like censorship and banned books week, this is a topic I know I will invariably revisit.
Thanks again, you've been Huge help.
Good for people to know.
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