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How to tell
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
How to tell
By M. Simon
Published 05. 17. 02 at 21:44 Sierra Time
How can you tell the right from the left in America? We do it like any good pollster or reporter would. We ask questions.
So the first question is "Do you believe that putting a gun to an honest non-violent person's head is the way to get the world you want?" Who in America would answer yes to such a question? So we have established a principle. Just to make it clear we can ask a second question. "Would you be willing to hire gunmen to do the job for you?" No? "What if the gunmen were government enforcers?" I will assume a more hesitant no.
The next question to ask is "Would you put a gun to people's heads to get social justice?" Right about now about half my audience is going very wobbly on me. They see pictures of poor people. They see the hungry. The out of work. And they say to me who wouldn't put a gun to people's heads to eliminate suffering. My reply is this. We have programs galore and we haven't done much to put and end to such suffering. In fact we have held back progress while trying to help. Suppose in the 50 years since WW2 the government had been limited to it's Constitutional functions. Milton Friedman estimates that would give us a growth rate of ten percent a year versus the three percent we are actually getting. We would have an economy twenty six times as large as we do today. There would be plenty to go around.
So even if it is morally acceptable to force people to pay for social justice it doesn't work too well. It actually retards the wealth needed to pay for what is wanted. So much for the left.
The next question to ask is "Would you put a gun to people's heads to get morality?" Right about now about now the other half of my audience is going very wobbly on me. Because, "your body is god's temple. It is not your own." Which may very well be true. But here comes the tricky part for a free country. "We who are closer to god having studied in divinity school are pleased to tell you exactly how god wants you to behave. For your own spiritual betterment we are going to prohibit moral pollutants like drugs." Why do they say this these days? Because they have no better argument left. Whatever harm drugs do, prohibition increases the harm ten fold. From an overdose stand point marijuana is safer than aspirin or alcohol. Even heroin is relatively safe if the antidote for heroin poisoning was at hand for an addict (we have laws against making the antidote available so as to maximize the number of deaths from heroin). So we have people from religious schools telling us how to live. And this isn't even Saudi Arabia.
The spiritual question is so important that it can't be left to chance or choice. Like those religious stalwarts of the Spanish Inquisition they intend to get the right answer from you if it kills you. And in fact occasionally it does. Usually we get a person killed every month or two in a marijuana bust gone bad. The rest that are captured are tortured for varying lengths of time by imprisonment until their attitude towards their evil behavior changes or someone can post bail. These religious conversions do not come cheap. We are willing to spend $20,000 or more a year on these practitioners of the false drug religion until they change their ways. Because every one knows drugs cannot bring you happiness (unless its Prozac) only God can bring you happiness (unless its Prozac).
The funny thing here too is that it doesn't work. Let us just take one small part of the culture war. Recent studies show that government anti-drug advertising at best is useless and at worst may actually encourage 12 and 13 year olds to try drugs. Like almost any government program it accomplishes the opposite of it's stated intentions. So we have demolished from both an intellectual and practical standpoint the arguments of the left and the right in favor of using government enforcers for their own pet programs. Given the sheer numbers involved in promoting the use of force to solve religious and economic problems I don't expect change any time soon in the prevailing morality. The best we can hope for is kinder jailers and gentler enforcers. I'm not holding my breath on that one either.
If you would like to find out more about what a free country was really supposed to be like you can go here:
To read copies of the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence, and other good stuff. Free.
M. Simon is an industrial controls designer and Free Market Green --
(c) M. Simon - All rights reserved.
Permission granted for one time use in a single periodical. Concurrent publication on the periodical's www site is also granted.
c 2002 SierraTimes.com (unless otherwise noted)
http://www.sierratimes.com/02/05/18/edms051802.htm
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
By M. Simon
Published 05. 17. 02 at 21:44 Sierra Time
How can you tell the right from the left in America? We do it like any good pollster or reporter would. We ask questions.
So the first question is "Do you believe that putting a gun to an honest non-violent person's head is the way to get the world you want?" Who in America would answer yes to such a question? So we have established a principle. Just to make it clear we can ask a second question. "Would you be willing to hire gunmen to do the job for you?" No? "What if the gunmen were government enforcers?" I will assume a more hesitant no.
The next question to ask is "Would you put a gun to people's heads to get social justice?" Right about now about half my audience is going very wobbly on me. They see pictures of poor people. They see the hungry. The out of work. And they say to me who wouldn't put a gun to people's heads to eliminate suffering. My reply is this. We have programs galore and we haven't done much to put and end to such suffering. In fact we have held back progress while trying to help. Suppose in the 50 years since WW2 the government had been limited to it's Constitutional functions. Milton Friedman estimates that would give us a growth rate of ten percent a year versus the three percent we are actually getting. We would have an economy twenty six times as large as we do today. There would be plenty to go around.
So even if it is morally acceptable to force people to pay for social justice it doesn't work too well. It actually retards the wealth needed to pay for what is wanted. So much for the left.
The next question to ask is "Would you put a gun to people's heads to get morality?" Right about now about now the other half of my audience is going very wobbly on me. Because, "your body is god's temple. It is not your own." Which may very well be true. But here comes the tricky part for a free country. "We who are closer to god having studied in divinity school are pleased to tell you exactly how god wants you to behave. For your own spiritual betterment we are going to prohibit moral pollutants like drugs." Why do they say this these days? Because they have no better argument left. Whatever harm drugs do, prohibition increases the harm ten fold. From an overdose stand point marijuana is safer than aspirin or alcohol. Even heroin is relatively safe if the antidote for heroin poisoning was at hand for an addict (we have laws against making the antidote available so as to maximize the number of deaths from heroin). So we have people from religious schools telling us how to live. And this isn't even Saudi Arabia.
The spiritual question is so important that it can't be left to chance or choice. Like those religious stalwarts of the Spanish Inquisition they intend to get the right answer from you if it kills you. And in fact occasionally it does. Usually we get a person killed every month or two in a marijuana bust gone bad. The rest that are captured are tortured for varying lengths of time by imprisonment until their attitude towards their evil behavior changes or someone can post bail. These religious conversions do not come cheap. We are willing to spend $20,000 or more a year on these practitioners of the false drug religion until they change their ways. Because every one knows drugs cannot bring you happiness (unless its Prozac) only God can bring you happiness (unless its Prozac).
The funny thing here too is that it doesn't work. Let us just take one small part of the culture war. Recent studies show that government anti-drug advertising at best is useless and at worst may actually encourage 12 and 13 year olds to try drugs. Like almost any government program it accomplishes the opposite of it's stated intentions. So we have demolished from both an intellectual and practical standpoint the arguments of the left and the right in favor of using government enforcers for their own pet programs. Given the sheer numbers involved in promoting the use of force to solve religious and economic problems I don't expect change any time soon in the prevailing morality. The best we can hope for is kinder jailers and gentler enforcers. I'm not holding my breath on that one either.
If you would like to find out more about what a free country was really supposed to be like you can go here:
To read copies of the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the Declaration of Independence, and other good stuff. Free.
M. Simon is an industrial controls designer and Free Market Green --
(c) M. Simon - All rights reserved.
Permission granted for one time use in a single periodical. Concurrent publication on the periodical's www site is also granted.
c 2002 SierraTimes.com (unless otherwise noted)
http://www.sierratimes.com/02/05/18/edms051802.htm
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878