There is a difference

Ambrose Bierce may have been writing many years ago, but I think that when he defined “conservative,” he was onto something — especially the difference between liberals and conservatives.

Conservative, n: A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal who wishes to replace them with others.

And if you liked Bierce, you might this classic dissection (by a Bierce fan) of what amounts to a tiny hair of a difference between the respective Republican and Democrat positions on the Drug War:

Making a distinction between Republicans and Democrats with regard to the WOD is difficult for several reasons that are fundamental to what government is all about. I list a few:

  • The WOD allowed that time-honored tradition of governments — the seizure of private property — to be re-instated (amazingly, with citizen approval!). History tells us that in ancient times, governments satisfied their desire for accumulating wealth by simple and honest plunder and property seizure. As governments got smarter, they organized the theft, provided a stable environment for its culture and labeled it “taxation” (See Mancur Olson’s essay, “Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development”, American Political Science Review, Sept. 1993). I quote Olson (discussing the successful evolution of Chinese warlords): “The warlords had no claim to legitimacy and their thefts were distinguished from those of roving bandits only because they took the form of continuing taxation rather than occasional plunder.” (In these modern times, the plunder sometimes has even more sophisticated titles such as “surcharge” as used by the recently imposed fee on anyone who has more than one telephone line.)
  • The WOD allows the meddling in the affairs of small defenseless countries at will.
  • The WOD provides another great opportunity to collect and spend great quantities of taxpayer’s hard earned cash without any serious opposition. The reason for this is that the Drug problem is very close to being a natural disaster — which governments love as they can spend freely without complaints.
  • He then lists a few “small but helpful differences”:

    The Democrats, as well as the Republicans, support the WOD, if for no other reason, because to do otherwise would result in the loss of votes. However, Democrats also support the concept as it allows the U.S. to act as the world policeman. Socialism is never going to work without one-world government.

    And,

    The Republicans love the WOD because it allows us to build up the military, throw a lot of people in jail that don’t come around to the prescribed religious/moral values, and is very profitable.

    Despite all my ranting (and despite my being pissed off at the right), I would be less than fair if I did not point out that in general, the left remains far worse than the right. The right wants to preserve the Constitution and believes in limited government. The left just believes in power without restraint, and unlimited government. These are major issues, and it is a huge philosophical split. So while there isn’t much of a difference between the two parties on issues such as the War on Drugs, where it comes to basic philosophies, there still is.

    OTOH, the more the GOP becomes like the Democrats on big government, the less inclined I will be to defend them.

    (And if the question were really forced upon me, I would have to admit that I do prefer old familiar, pre-1914 evils days to new unfamiliar ones….)

     


    Posted

    in

    by

    Tags:

    Comments

    15 responses to “There is a difference”

    1. Simon Avatar
      Simon

      Thanks.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Convention_on_Narcotic_Drugs

      As noted below, its major effects included updating the Paris Convention of 13 July 1931 to include the vast number of synthetic opioids invented in the intervening 30 years and a mechanism for more easily including new ones.

      =============

      http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/cu/cu8.html

      A second conference was held at The Hague in 1911, and out of it came the first international opium agreement, The Hague Convention of 1912, aimed primarily at solving the opium problems of the Far East, especially China.

      It was against this background that the Senate in 1914 considered the Harrison narcotic bill. The chief proponent of the measure was Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, a man of deep prohibitionist and missionary convictions and sympathies. He urged that the law be promptly passed to fulfill United States obligations under the new international treaty. 3

      The supporters of the Harrison bill said little in the Congressional debates (which lasted several days) about the evils of narcotics addiction in the United States. They talked more about the need to implement The Hague Convention of 1912. Even Senator Mann of Mann Act fame, spokesman for the bill in the Senate, talked about international obligations rather than domestic morality.

    2. Darleen Click Avatar

      Just a note: Republicans =/= Conservatives

    3. Simon Avatar
      Simon

      I’m not so sure the Right wants to preserve the Constitution.

      You never hear the great mass of them railing against the alphabet soup agencies. Why not privatize the FDA? The UL does similar stuff for the electrical industry at much lower cost.

    4. Darleen Click Avatar

      Simon

      Depends on what “right” you’re talking about. During the primaries saw several discussions about eliminating Fed agencies

      and then we had people like Nancy Pelosi getting tons of laudatory media coverage as she charged Republicans with LOVE LOVE LOVING dirty air, dirty water and starving teh childrens …

    5. Daniel Taylor Avatar
      Daniel Taylor

      The Religious Right, in declaring that they want to control what people do in the privacy of their own bedrooms, what they put into their bodies, even what they think and say, seems to me to be favoring much more intrusive government than anybody on the left these days.

      Not that I agree with everything the left says, either, but their worst crime seems to me to be wanting to protect people from necessary risks. Sometimes (mandatory installation of seatbelts in cars, for instance) they even get it correct in protecting people from unnecessary risks.

    6. […] of Ambrose Bierce, in Politico today, NRO’s Rich Lowry looks at the rise of Egypt’s latest new […]

    7. Simon Avatar
      Simon

      Daniel,

      I tend to side with you at the current time.

    8. Darleen Click Avatar

      Daniel, with all due respect, can you name me what laws the “Religious Right” are demanding that want to regulate what one does in the privacy of the bedroom? Or what one “thinks or says”? Because not only do I not see this American Taliban, it is a slander that I will not stand for.

      1) Abortion has nothing to do with “bedroom” nor speech
      2) Same-sex marriage is about a public institution and the radical redefinition so “change” is coming from the Left, not from the RR
      3)Forcing Peter to pay for Paula’s birth control is not a “bedroom” issue.

      On the other hand we have the NannyState Left out to control soda, shower heads, toilets, backyard bbq’s, restaurant menus, banning toys in happy meals, what kind of house you’ll be allowed to live in and where, banning “husband, wife, bride, groom” from government documents, speech codes on campuses, even making a law that pr0n actors must wear condoms.

      Of course, I guess if you believe all the latter are necessary to protect people because they are too dumb to make decisions for themselves, then, yeah, Hurrah to the Left and let’s give raspberries to the icky god-botherers & bitter clingers.

    9. Daniel Taylor Avatar
      Daniel Taylor

      I take it you are unfamiliar with sodomy laws, which are still in force in many jurisdictions?

      Abortion restriction (especially first trimester) is very much reaching into a woman’s body based on a religious belief about what is there. It’s as personal a restriction based on religious beliefs as they come.

      The very basis of same-sex marriage opposition is religious, and if you think that telling people they can’t marry is not related to what they do in their bedroom I have some bad news for you.

      Birth control is about more than sex, especially hormone-based birth control. Of course, a woman who is on birth control can have sex with lower risk of pregnancy, but that is her choice to make not yours or mine.

      If someone wants to tell me who I can have sex with, what I can or can’t put into my body, what I can or can’t take *out* of my body, when any of those don’t impact others (sorry, your choice of a shower head does impact others whether you believe it or not, especially if you live someplace like Atlanta that is prone to water supply problems).

      The funny thing is that most of the things in your complaint list are restrictions on *companies* where I am more concerned with restrictions on *individuals*.

    10. Darleen Click Avatar

      I’m reluctant pro-choice, but I am under no delusion that we are dealing with human life. You call it “reaching into a woman’s body” but you never finish the sentence. It is destruction of human life. Period.

      And you’re wrong about SSM opposition. There is very good societal reasons not related to religion that restrict marriage to male/female sex. Again SCIENCE shows that the sexes are not fungible.

      Your birth control statement is a non-sequitur to what I wrote. No one is demanding laws that restrict a woman accessing b/c. What Constitutional right is being argued is not forcing person A to PAY for person B’s b/c.

      Not one thing you’ve listed has anything to do with controlling who you have sex with or how. But hey, you don’t mind controlling how I want to clean my body, even if I’m willing to pay for the extra water.

      Mote/beam some assembly required.

    11. Darleen Click Avatar

      And if I’m not allowed to buy a single family home, or a happy meal, or a soda, how is that not an individual restriction?

      So you have no problem with dictating market restrictions… businesses are “free” as long as they do exactly what the government tells them to do at all times.

      :::cough::: fascism ::::cough::::

    12. Daniel Taylor Avatar
      Daniel Taylor

      Fascism has more to do with business telling the government what to do, but it is defined more by the degree than the kind.

      Same with socialism, communism, capitalism, and just about every other -ism out there.

      A properly functioning economy and society needs aspects of all of these, just not taken to extremes.

      We *need* government to literally protect the weak from the strong, but we also *need* to allow people and entities to become strong and benefit from that.

      Government needs to listen to business, but government also needs to tell businesses not to do things that clearly cause harm.

      We need unions, but we also need to ability to break them up when they become corrupt.

      There are no easy, simple answers to any of this, and admitting to the complexity is taken as a sign of weakness or corruption in our politicians.

      The conservative stand on government is the minimum *necessary* to ensure free markets and social stability, but that includes the implicit assumption that some level of government regulation is not merely a good thing, but a necessary thing, that which we cannot have free markets and a stable society without.

      To address directly the points in your last post:
      Who is more likely to tell you that you *can’t* buy a home? The government or a mogtage company?
      I note that the toy does not make the meal, it is a marketing gimmick to get people to buy a particular meal for their children. This is a restriction on companies ability to manipulate you, not a restriction on you. I don’t get why *you* would be upset by this unless you are a major stockholder in a fast food chain that uses that particular manipulation.
      The NYC soda thing is ridiculous, but again it is a restriction on a manipulative business practice that is used to get people to buy more of something than is healthy for them, to the profits of the business.

      Yeah, it’s theoretically “nanny state”, but neither of these things are keeping you from buying toys, or drinking too much soda, they are just telling companies not to manipulate you into doing so.

      I’d advise you to get that beam checked out, it looks painful.

    13. TallDave Avatar

      Who is more likely to tell you that you *can’t* buy a home? The government or a mogtage company?

      Nonsense. Mortgage companies can’t prevent you from doing anything, as they don’t have people with guns. They can only refuse to enter into a transaction by which you might purchase a home. Your question is tantamount to saying “Mortgage companies should be forced to help me buy me a house, whether or not they believe the transaction will benefit them.”

      It doesn’t matter if the toy makes kids want the meal or the soda is unhealthy, it’s up to the consumer to decide what to consume. Everyone is free to not buy whatever they want, they are not infants that need to be protected from all possibly unwise decisions by all-knowing idiots with guns.

    14. TallDave Avatar

      Should people drink massive amounts of high-glycemic carbs? Hell no. In my opinion, people also shouldn’t smoke, gamble, ski, box, race cars, listen to Michael Moore, fly in small airplanes, work 100 hours a week, yell at their kids, or go a week without exercise.

      But none of those things should be illegal simply because they’re bad choices, even if thousands of people die every year from smoking, skiing, racing, flying small planes, overworking themselves, and not exercising — yes, even if other people are making money offering the opportunity to make those bad choices.

    15. Daniel Taylor Avatar
      Daniel Taylor

      Dave, you seem to be making a radical assumption here: that people are rational.

      We may have bursts of rationality, but by and large most of the decisions people make over the course of their day are not. We just don’t have enough brain power to think everything through every time, not even the smartest of us.

      Merchants and marketers know this, and take advantage of it. The NYC soda law doesn’t attack people drinking more soda than is healthy, it attacks merchant’s sneak attack to encourage them to do so without thinking (and profit more in the process).

      If you can’t even understand who and what is being restricted by a law, how do you expect to have a valid opinion about it?