Noam Chomsky On Class War
posted by Flimsy Sanity @ 6:10 AM
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2 Comments:
At 7:56 AM,
ryk said…
Chomsky is awesome. I've read several of his books now. I just find it amazing how he can pull a multitude of facts together from the pubic record to reveal what the people running our government are really up to using their own words.
At 6:28 AM,
Anonymous said…
The current criminal justice-oriented regime is adamant in its opposition to allowing government to make drug use safe. In the name of "sending a message" about how evil (some) drug use is, the criminal justice model completely abandons all attempts to regulate recreational drugs. It allows people to die from overdoses, and allows people to be traumatized by drugs that are not what they expected or are contaminated with all manner of cutting agents, fillers and toxic chemicals. It allows massive drug cartels to prey on recreational drug consumers without the slightest intervention by a regulatory regime, without being taxed on their products, without being subject to any form of civil liability for the costs these cartels impose on society. In short, it's a total free-for-all, subject only to an occasional arrest of some bit player.
If any major pharmaceutical corporation or alcohol company ever had such a sweet deal, pumping its products out into a market full of ignorant consumers without any regulation whatsoever, we might recognize this system for what it is: an egregious government failure to stand between the public and predatory business interests. But we have somehow grown accustomed to thinking that this continual acquiescence to the interests of drug cartels is actually a "tough" stance on drugs, one that really "sends a message" to the manufacturers of cocaine and methamphetamine.
To me, that's the fact that should make progressives' brains explode: that this ostensibly "tough" policy on drugs actually facilitates a rapacious drug market whose size and influence only grows from year to year. That our "toughness" consists of allowing some drug companies -- the "illegal" ones -- to operate tax-free, liability-free and without any government oversight whatsoever.
That's so tough I think I can feel my cerebellum starting to tremble.
A more libertarian approach to drug policy would cut through some of the nonsense and some of the lazy assumptions that have built up around this war on drugs. It would change the way we're expending the limited resources of our government, allowing us to to stand up to the manufacturers of recreational drugs and to create safer conditions for people who choose to use such drugs rather than waging one more chapter in a battle against ourselves.
It wouldn't be a cure-all for the real problems of addiction, because no system can. And it wouldn't make certain that no child will ever use drugs, because no system can. But it might help turn back the tide on American's incarceration binge, and it might help save some lives. As far as I'm concerned, that's a pretty progressive goal, no brain explosion required.
Why Serious Progressives Should Be Drug War Libertarians (And How They Can Do This Without Causing Their Brains To Explode)
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