Conservatives, like liberals, when they imagine a government program imagine that the job will be done well. I on the other hand imagine it will be done the government way. Which is why I'm a libertarian. I have the American disease: I don't trust the government. Government operates on the LCD principle. And that is a screen. A screen used in everything government does. Oh. Yeah. LCD? Lowest Common Denominator. And the lowest common denominator when it comes to government? Criminals. Every one subject to a government program gets treated like a criminal. Except those running the program. The most popular criminals these days are dope criminals. Contraband don't you know? The current TSA Follies are driving that home.

The government has practiced these techniques for several decades on dopers. How do we know? Occasionally the dope police make a mistake and get the wrong person. Some one with a voice. And the police terrorize them in the same way they would if the people were the usual no accounts.

Radley Balko thinks libertarianism happens to people.

It's a theory of mine.

I think a good chunk of people who call themselves libertarians came to do so after having a nightmarish encounter with some angry bureaucrat, petty city councilman, a bad run-in with the police, or, perhaps, have had the misfortune to know firsthand the benefits of medical marijuana. They then began to see how even the most benevolent and innocuos of government actions screw other people over, too. And, just maybe, they start to see how it all fits together

Here is something I wrote about the Drug War in a review of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

So why aren't cops kicking THEIR doors in? Why aren't THEIR sons pulled over a dozen times in nine months? Why are black men 12 times likelier to be jailed for drugs than white ones? Why aren't WHITE communities robbed of their fathers, brothers, sons?

The answer is pretty simple. If the laws were equally enforced the Drug War would be over in a few months. White people wouldn't stand for it.

Cross Posted at Power and Control