The Dissing of Ron Paul

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Lets use age of consent as an example. It does involve a very personal aspect of people's lives. Most states have it at 18, some at 16 and isnt there one that has it at 14? im not sure. Anyways, the decisions to set such an age is decided on a local level and can vary. If the Fed. gov. came out and said sorry, age of consent is 25 .. then all states would have to abide by it.

That's when you have a very small group who do not live in nor represent the interests and culture of a state, making sensitive decisions for them that affect their very lives and lifestyle.

As another poster has said, the state gov. and officials can be kicked out of office by direct means by a population that does not like what they do. The fed gov oth, requires all other states to agree and even then you might still need to grab your rifle and march on DC.

Problem is, the local "will of the people" doesn't guarantee that individual rights will be protected. Bigoted populism can be as much a tyranny as an overreaching federal government. Often it's not the government that's the problem. Its the people themselves who are the problem.

Oh wow- I'd always thought he might be the one nationally-prominent Republican I might be able to stand as President, given his stance on the Fed and the notion of buying Debt, not to mention his less-than-hearty support of our current military conflicts, but this changes my view substantially. Oh well. It wasn't as if I'd ever have voted for him, me being a libertarian.

Hence why no libertarian I know would ever support the political party proclaiming itself to be libertarian, which seems to have a platform of disenfranchising the American citizen through the tyranny of STATE government, as opposed to FEDERAL.

That's right, though I will point out one thing: It's not that tyranny of the masses is just as bad as federal government overreach, but that federal government overreaching through changes in law is the result of popular demand. So either way, tyranny of the masses is still the root of the problem since it is the people who demand the government to pass certain laws rather than the government acting on its own.

Last edited by AceOfSpades on 19 May 2011, 10:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Not a particularly-good example- the general age of consent is as it is based on objective factors in brain differentiation between a child and an adult as far as decision-making and comprehension of consequences. It would make more sense to me in light of that if it was standardized, nationally, regardless of whose "sensitivities" it affects to not be able to have sex with a 16 year old as an adult. (Only 12 states have an age of consent set at 18, actually, 8 at 17, and 31 set at 16. There are none set at 15, let alone 14.)

I think a similar case would be abortion rights- proclaiming them to be a "state's rights issue" would mean entire regions of the country would be without access to abortion, meaning poor women who can least afford pre-natal care, possible impact on her job and education, and a safe birth in a hospital will be the very ones forced to continue pregnancy and give birth,
whereas wealthier women who could afford travel will not be. Whether abortion is legal or illegal, it's nothing short of extreme classism to advocate it's availability be contingent on one's means to travel, which is the exact effect of the "states rights" philosophy.

Not to many "libertarian" drug warriors...

No, because a good portion of them are also Utilitarians, and legalizing crack cocaine and meth can't in any reasonable measure be asserted to cause less suffering than those being illegal prevents.

Decriminalization is believed to have had positive effects though: http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... nalization

Even further, all that illegalization does is that it increases the cost of acquiring the material, however, drugs can still be found. A legalization program, however, can focus on making sure that the drug trade is regulated, and in putting the entire situation under some control. After all, the drug war is a complete waste of everybody's time and money and by NO reasonable measure can that drug war be considered a good policy, as all it creates is violence in the streets, and ever increasing escalation. Instead, I think that Gary Becker has a point in this post here: http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/2005/ ... ecker.html Legalization with massive taxation can achieve many similar effects without half of the problems of a drug war.

Yes. Because the only deterrent to illegal drug usage is monetary,
and state taxing of the purchase of the substance "controls" the effects of its use.
I can't wait til crack addiction is as common as tobacco addiction.

90% of the problems associated with drugs have to do with prohibition. People should be free to be put whatever they want into their own bodies. Like Dr. Paul said, do you need to government to tell you not to do heroin? If heroin were made legal, would you go out start doing heroin? It's nonsense and in the end, the only the person that can protect you from drugs is yourself because quite frankly it's not that to buy illegal drugs. It's a health problem, not a criminal problem.

Spoken by someone who's never treated an infant exchanged for sexual use for crack,
or been the relative of someone burned alive by a home invader tripping on angel dust.

Those would still be a crimes even if those drugs were legal, drug laws obviously didn't prevent them. Prohibition have proven over and over again that it is completely and utterly counter-productive. Since 1971, has the drug problem become better or worse? From what I know it has become unbelievably worse since then. When you ban something, it doesn't disappear and people's desire for it isn't deterred; it just gets driven underground and that's where you run into the issues with prohibition. Back during the prohibition of alcohol there was an EXPLOSION of organized crime and what we have now is the modern day of equivalent in every big city and small town in America. We have 500,000+ people who have been kidnapped from their families and put in prison in this country who are non-violent drug offenders, we've killed hundreds of thousands of people, and have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on this completely futile "war". Are we really better off? Is that fuzzy feeling in your stomach worth the toll of blood and treasure?

No one who has come from a community full of meth heads and their victims as I have would accuse me of having a "fuzzy feeling" about anything to do with drug legalization.

I truly hope you are never forced to survive in a society where what you're advocating has come to pass.

Do drug laws not apply where you live? I thought that was what was keeping us safe. You mean people still use drugs even though they're illegal? Some people do bad things on drugs, most don't but some do and they should face face the consequences when they do, Saying you're from a community full of drug users doesn't really impress me as every community, big or small, has to deal with drug addiction. I live in a poor community, I've too seen the affects it has first hand. I'm not advocating drug use, what I am saying is that prohibition DOES NOT WORK. It's counterproductive, more people actually do drugs now. It costs hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars, money we do not have. Prohibition has probably killed way more people than we've saved. You know the Drug War down Mexico? 15,000 people died last year and that is a direct consequence of drug prohibition. It's just a ridiculous policy and you're doing very little to convince me otherwise.

didn't realize you were bethie btw, i remember you being a better debater

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Nuff said................