[quote]Varqanir wrote:
[quote]pittbulll wrote:
I am guessing [/quote]
You should probably preface all of your posts with this clause.[/quote]
probably 
Ć¢??He who establishes his argument by noise and command, shows that his reason is weak.Ć¢??
Ć¢?? Michel de Montaigne
I am guessing that Michel de Montaigne would not have had a successful career at Fox News.
[quote]NickViar wrote:
[quote]cwill1973 wrote:
Prostitution is not a victimless crime. A recent sting where I live resulted in the recovery of a 16 year old girl who had been prostituted out since she was 13. Her last pimp, who also was busted, admitted he had just bought her from another pimp. She was not doing it of her own free will. Over 150 juvenile girls were recovered nationwide that week during prostitution stings.
[/quote]
Prostitution is definitely a victimless ācrime.ā Enslaving another against her will is not. Prostitution is engaging in sexual relations for some form of payment or benefit. If someone is doing something against her own free will or can be bought and sold, she is a slave.[/quote]
Exactly. How many underage girls pimped out since they were 13 are at the Bunny Ranch? Iām guessing NONE. Itās regulated. Inspected. The whores are Tested. Itās the oldest profession.
If a woman wantās to sell her pussy, who cares? But the āevilā men who āvictimizeā these āgirlsā get busted, have their names published in the paper BEFORE TRIAL, and have their vehicles seized and auctioned off by the State for doing something that has essentially been done by EVERY guy - prostitution is just bypassing the dinner and getting straight to the value exchange.
When you go to a whore, you arenāt paying for SEX. You are paying her to not fucking bother you AFTER you have sex.
^^ this.
And with drugs, they need to be regulated and taxed. The same arguments made about the zombies walking around can be made with the homeless drunks. Sure, there are alot of costs and drunk bums b/c alcohol is legal. But guess what? not many dead bodies b/c Budweiser is protecting their turf!
And the billions saved in not fighting the war on drugs (plus the added tax revenue) would be used to address addiction and social services.
Yes. We would have more homeless folks and zombies. Butā¦ Itās an agreeable trade off for the countless murders from the drug trade.
[quote]NorCal916 wrote:
The same arguments made about the zombies walking around can be made with the homeless drunks.[/quote]
Absolutely.
-The costs are a result of the majority of society feeling morally obligated to help the drunk bums and failing to separate the morality of individually helping drunk bums from the immorality of forcing others to do the same. I doubt prohibition did much to curb the number of drunk bums; drunk bums exist for reasons other than the legality of alcohol.
Iāll chime in here. My son ended up being a serious drug user and is now, thankfully, in rehab and is taking it seriously. Why? I divorced my wife because I got tired of her and her hippie friends smoking up and even though pot is supposedly benign, the truth of the matter is that being wasted is being wasted ā she was neglecting my kids and running me into the poorhouse.
All attempts to help her failed, over time (let us be clear, everyone who knows me will tell you I am a great husband and outstanding father.) Now enter the State of Illinois. Men are evil and children are always better off with mom. To combat this - at the behest of my lawyer ā I paid the max possible for child support to her with the understanding that I would still pay for everything my kids needed. She took the money and did not press to have custody.
The only way I could get her out the picture would have been to call a drug raid on my house, turn her in and make sure she got charged. This is how it works people. (FWIW my lawyer stood up at the end of the drug possession hearing for my son and stated flatly that the worst mistake of his career was advising me to not bar all contact of her with my kids. That pretty well stunned the judge who was very kind at that point in trying to get my son back on track.)
Back to history, I was named their legal guardian but they could go over to her place whenever they wanted. Son #2 was 12 at the time. If I tried to stop him, that could be seen as violating the divorce decree and I could lose all rights. This is crucial. State law makes it damned near impossible for a good dad to do anything and is sexist as Hell on this account.
Here is where it went wrong. She ended up with a nasty, abusive crack user who cooked meth. now and then, John by name ā real trash. My youngest stayed there ever more. When I asked why (only recently have we been able to have these chats) he stated that it was because if he was there, John would yell and hit him rather than her.
He resented the fact I had my life together and she didnāt and wanted to help her even though she was, in point of fact, sabotaging every attempt. By this point she has started using crack as well, it turns out. Trying to get him out of there was damned near impossible and all it would take from her is a single word to the State and I would automatically lose any contact I had and be required to go through a legal lengthy process to even see him again.
His older brother refused to go near her house (he is currently a straight A engineering student at college, FYI). So she and her total loser friends turned son #2 on to smoking, then drinking (he was 15). Then a bit later they decided heād be funnier on crack. Then cocaine. Then heroin. The whole time I am doing everything and anything to try and intervene, but not really knowing the full depth to which this has fallen.
He simply stopped coming near me and told me to my face that it was because I was judgemental, unlike his new friends (FYI, they are not judgemental because they are basket cases and will put up with just about any shit if you will tolerate them. This is my experience with folks fixated on being non-judgemental.) He is by this point (age 17) trying to get off it on his own and failing miserably. Then he gets arrested for possession of marijuana. This is good and bad.
So here is where I re-enter our current thread. The War on Drugs means that seeking help gets you thrown in jail, along with as many of your friends as possible. So even people that want to stop are terrified of seeking help. Once you have a criminal record, you can kiss goodbye ever getting out of the ghetto. Is it true that the courts played a role in getting him into rehab? Sure.
Did they also play a role in putting him in harms way and causing the issue? Yes. Did their policies on drugs, by treating them as criminal activities rather than a healthcare issue, make the problem intractable? Yes. Most of the losers who hang around my ex that Iāve talked to are, in point of fact, self-medicating with drugs since they do not want to seek treatment for their other issues, such as being schizophrenic, depressive, bipolar, abused, &c., &c. And no, better healthcare wonāt help them since most of them are already on public assistance and can get it for free.
So what do I think? I think the problem is not the evil political parties. I do not think people are in it for the money ā since money is always involved in everything since people get paychecks, that is a ready made cop-out the destroys any serious analysis of a situation. Donāt let Karl Marx do for us what he did for North Korea and yes I am saying sauch analysis itself is pernicious.
No, the problem is nice middle class people who failed civics. The Criminal Justice system does one thing: it destroys the life of anyone it gets hold of, even those it supposedly is trying to help as often as not. The disconnect is that people think that passing a law is a matter of regulation, that suddenly everyone quits doing whatever once the law hits the books. (My favorite example in Illinois was that until very recently it was a felony to attempt suicide. So yeah, someone with a real psychiatric issue will be fixed by throwing them into prison with a bunch of real felons.)
No, passing a law means that there is suddenly a new class of criminals. (Most drug law is so byzantine virtually nobody outside of a state prosecutor can understand it, let alone regular citizens or drug-addled users.) In this case, people who are self-medicating are now criminals, not sick people. There are a disproportionate number of mentally ill in prison because of this and they get no help and from what I saw the police know this and do target people with mental illnesses or who are just poor minorities.
What is more, the economics of criminality mean that the government in effect creates monopolies of illegal substances and economics drives it.
All that gun violence? About 80% - 90% is criminals fighting over drugs. (One recent study showed that if you remove the top 5 US cityās violence, the US has a rate of violence less than most European countries and even Canada. Let that sink in. The US on the whole is a very safe place to unless you are in the drug trade, then it is extremely lethal.
There are mass murders every day ā defines as more than 2 victims ā but these are mostly related to drugs and who gives a f*ck in the press?) Most of that robbery and theft? A majority of it is drug users trying to get a fix. The rise and fall of the drug trade in the US over the last 30 years is exactly the rise and fall of the economics behind crack and heroin ā almost completely independent of interdiction and enforcement policies.
Yes I am saying that the entire War on Drugs has had nearly the opposite effect of stopping drugs and has made them much more violent and lucrative.* The government (under Reagan) had the wonderful Idea of spraying paraquat on Marijuana fields to render it toxic and end marijuana use. The real effect was to turn on the crack trade and push it into high gear. The huge upswing in incarcerations (mandatory 5 and 10 years sentences) meant that drug dealers and users were being taken off the street at a fast rate and were being replaced just as fast.
Some poor kid in the projects can probably only get a job as a drug dealer. The US has 10 times the number of people incarcerated as any other country and 25% of everyone in a prison in the First World sits in a US jail. True the incarceration rate is finally starting to drop because the drug trade is slowly contracting since the population as a whole is aging.
So what do I think? Legalize drugs. Now. Treat drug use as a healthcare issue, not as a criminal enterprise. And never, ever forget that the first Amendment separating Church and State is better understood as an injunction on have the State take a moral position. Re-instating civil rights (you have a lot fewer of them now than you think) will have to come later. The War on Drugs has been an expensive, repressive and unrelieved disaster and should be treated as such.
Full of shit as alwaysā¦
ā jj
=======
As a martial artist, I did a stint of training cops for several years so I know a bunch of them. This is not pretty and it is all bipartisan with the support of nice middle class people that want law enforcement to be a service like MacDonaldās. These are the people who tirelessly lobby for a police state.
Sorry to hear your woes dude , good luck in the future .
I contend another aspect of the War On Drugs is all the problems in Mexico , El Salvador, Columbia. All these refugees fleeing drug violence
Chicagoās worst weekend 41 shot 7 killed , No one is saying look at all the fucking problems this war is causing , they should
[quote]pittbulll wrote:
Sorry to hear your woes dude , good luck in the future .
I contend another aspect of the War On Drugs is all the problems in Mexico , El Salvador, Columbia. All these refugees fleeing drug violence
Chicagoās worst weekend 41 shot 7 killed , No one is saying look at all the fucking problems this war is causing , they should [/quote]
Iām sure that Rahm Emanuel thinks that the guns are to blame.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Iām sure that Rahm Emanuel thinks that the guns are to blame.[/quote]
I doubt he actually THINKS that, but peddling that line to the ignorant/stupid public, in order to have its members gleefully shackle themselves, is easy.
[quote]jj-dude wrote:
And never, ever forget that the first Amendment separating Church and State is better understood as an injunction on have the State take a moral position. [/quote]
That is exactly how the people of America need to demand the state regard that line. The citizens need to demand that the government only protect life, liberty, and each citizenās pursuit of happiness. The government needs to be forced into its legitimate role as a servant. It has been allowed to become our master.
[quote]jj-dude wrote:
And never, ever forget that the first Amendment separating Church and State is better understood as an injunction on have the State take a moral position.
[/quote]
Excuse me? Can you explain this please?
[quote]NickViar wrote:
That is exactly how the people of America need to demand the state regard that line. [/quote]
What the fuck are you talking about? Are you seriously arguing that people should pretend the free exercise and establishment clauses of the first amendment mean something they clearly donāt mean so that you can inject libertinism into federalism?
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]NickViar wrote:
That is exactly how the people of America need to demand the state regard that line. [/quote]
What the fuck are you talking about? Are you seriously arguing that people should pretend the free exercise and establishment clauses of the first amendment mean something they clearly donāt mean so that you can inject libertinism into federalism?[/quote]
āCongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.ā
-That clearly doesnāt mean that the government should not attempt to legislate morality?
Define religion. I donāt see the definition in there. Can it not be defined as, āa pursuit or interest to which someone ascribes supreme importanceā?
Who is arguing in favor of libertinism? Not me.
āLibertarianism is a political philosophy. It is concerned solely with the proper use of force.ā(from Libertarianism and Libertinism; by Walter Block)
A libertine āmay be defined as a person who loves, exults in, participates in, and/or advocates the morality of all sorts of perverse acts, but who at the same time eschews all acts of invasive violence.ā(from Libertarianism and Libertinism; by Walter Block)
[quote]NickViar wrote:
āCongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.ā
-That clearly doesnāt mean that the government should not attempt to legislate morality?
[/quote]
What it means couldnāt be more simple:
and
Well no, because that would be so broad and all encompassing as to be idiotic. The free exercise clause was not intended to protect someoneās ārightā to do anything they claim is āsupremely importantā to them. But this is to digress. Letās stick to my question. You claimed that people should ādemandā that the free exercise and establishment clauses be interpreted as a prohibition on morality based laws. What constitutional basis exists for this interpretation?
You are. Advocating that the state should not legislate morality in any circumstances is advocating libertinism as the state is the only institution capable of enforcing morality. Just as if I were to say murder should not be illegal I would in essence be advocating a murderous society.
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
[quote]jj-dude wrote:
And never, ever forget that the first Amendment separating Church and State is better understood as an injunction on have the State take a moral position.
[/quote]
Excuse me? Can you explain this please? [/quote]
Iāll try. At the time of the Revolution, the only legitimate Church was the Church of England (COE). Tithes had to be paid, the Church had courts which could (and had) imposed the death penalty and failure to attend services was a crime. Many of the people in the Colonies had left England on this account, including various Protestant sects and Catholics and were separatists on this account (the first reference to such a separation was by Roger Williams in 1644, so this was part of American thinking from the start) The 6th amendment explicitly forbade requiring religious tests for office, also tossing out a disliked British requirement, And do not forget that the King was the head of the COE as well, so there was a potentially toxic mix of State and Religion that they could see daily. The great problem with such a system is that it put the State at loggerheads with peopleās religious beliefs and morals. This was discussed repeatedly at this time. You never want to it to be that it is an ethical position to undermine or destroy the State. The point is that the first amendmentās separation of Church and State was written with the idea that if there is a state church, people will follow the dictates of their conscience (possibly) against it.
Now the only example that there was at the time was an organized religion. Their analysis could not take into account the rise of secular religions aka ideologies, such as Communism, Nazism, &c., but still the great tragedy in such countries was essentially having the State redefine morality as part of social engineering then running wild afterwards. To be blunt, the Constitution forbids religion entering the state, but does not specify what a religion is. Ideologies do conform in both theory and practice to the practical definition of a religion, even though they are often avowedly secular.
In the US, the most famous example of a moral crusade was Prohibition which managed to double the homicide rate, create organized crime and poison untold numbers of people with bad hooch before being repealed.
Make more sense?
ā jj
No it doesnāt. And the phrase āseparation of church and stateā is not contained in any of the founding documents. In fact, itās a concept that was invented in 1947 based on an out of context quote from a private letter by Jefferson. But all of this is besides the point. The free exercise and establishment clauses were based on Jeffersonās Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. No where will you find the founders arguing for anything that could be remotely construed as prohibitions against morality based laws. If you disagree, please direct me to the relevant discussions. Further, this has nothing to do with making drugs illegal. To argue that the free exercise and establishment clauses prohibit the state from making drugs illegal is absolutely absurd. If youāre going to take such a radical position you would do better to ground your argument in the commerce clause - a flimsy argument, but one that could at least maintain the pretence of reason.
[quote]SexMachine wrote:
You are. Advocating that the state should not legislate morality in any circumstances is advocating libertinism as the state is the only institution capable of enforcing morality. Just as if I were to say murder should not be illegal I would in essence be advocating a murderous society.
[/quote]
Again, a libertarian need not be a libertine.
Saying that murder should be permitted is just another way of saying that some should rule others. Libertarians believe that people own their bodies and their justly acquired property, so you are totally wrong there.
From your statement that, āthe state is the only institution capable of enforcing morality,ā I can infer that you believe there is no power higher than the state. We will just have to disagree there.
A libertarian only believes that force should not be used against libertines. A libertine may advocate any of a number of things I find immoral.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
[quote]pittbulll wrote:
Sorry to hear your woes dude , good luck in the future .
I contend another aspect of the War On Drugs is all the problems in Mexico , El Salvador, Columbia. All these refugees fleeing drug violence
Chicagoās worst weekend 41 shot 7 killed , No one is saying look at all the fucking problems this war is causing , they should [/quote]
Iām sure that Rahm Emanuel thinks that the guns are to blame.[/quote]
I would disagree
[quote]NickViar wrote:
Again, a libertarian need not be a libertine.
[/quote]
In a strictly literal sense yes. If I say that murder should be legal it doesnāt necessarily follow that I am a murderer. However, I am advocating a murderous society so the distinction isnāt really important for all intents and purposes.
No, thatās just you trying to project your radical views on social contract theory onto a narrow, unrelated thought experiment of mine.
[quote]
Libertarians believe that people own their bodies and their justly acquired property.[/quote]
Libertarians are not all the same. The positions that you have taken place you firmly in the camp of the radical libertarian/anarchist. I agree with the above statement but I am in the rational/minarchist camp. But again, you have skipped my point - the free exercise and establishment clauses do not mean what you want them to mean.
[quote]pittbulll wrote:
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
[quote]pittbulll wrote:
Sorry to hear your woes dude , good luck in the future .
I contend another aspect of the War On Drugs is all the problems in Mexico , El Salvador, Columbia. All these refugees fleeing drug violence
Chicagoās worst weekend 41 shot 7 killed , No one is saying look at all the fucking problems this war is causing , they should [/quote]
Iām sure that Rahm Emanuel thinks that the guns are to blame.[/quote]
I would disagree
[/quote]
You would disagree that guns are to blame, or that Rahm Emanuel would think that they are?