{"id":26451,"date":"2014-06-22T11:46:35","date_gmt":"2014-06-22T16:46:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=26451"},"modified":"2014-06-22T11:46:35","modified_gmt":"2014-06-22T16:46:35","slug":"george-w-bushs-former-drug-czar-does-his-very-best-baghdad-bob-imitation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/06\/22\/george-w-bushs-former-drug-czar-does-his-very-best-baghdad-bob-imitation\/","title":{"rendered":"George W. Bush’s former Drug Czar does his very best Baghdad Bob imitation"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Image<\/a>

Image courtesy of Meme Generator<\/em><\/p><\/div><\/p>\n

Nick Gillespie<\/a> reports on the one war we should be happy to lose once and for all:<\/p>\n

It turns out that Dick Cheney isn\u2019t the only Bush administration muckety-muck still fighting the last war.<\/p>\n

Even as the former vice-president took to the pages of The Wall Street Journal<\/em> to blame<\/a> Barack Obama for the deteriorating situation in Iraq, George W. Bush\u2019s drug czar, John P. Walters, is arguing in Politico<\/em> that no, really, victory in the war on drugs is just around the corner. We\u2019ve just got to hold the line, don\u2019t you see, especially against Barack Obama, \u201cwhose administration has facilitated marijuana legalization\u201d despite also setting a record for federal raids<\/a> against medical pot dispensaries in California.<\/p>\n

More important, insists Walters, is that you understand \u201cWhy Libertarians Are Wrong About Drugs<\/a>.\u201d Well, OK. I know I\u2019ve been wrong about drugs at times. For instance, I seriously worried that Colorado might have taxed its fully legal pot out of reach<\/a> of most buyers, thus allowing a black market to thrive. But it turns out that the biggest problem in the Centennial State is how to spend extra tax revenues generated by pot sales, which are coming in 40 percent higher than expected. Oh yeah, and crime is down<\/a> in Denver.<\/p>\n

Recognizing that public opinion increasingly backs treating pot similar to beer, wine, and alcohol<\/a>, Walters explains that the \u201cthe libertarian commitment to freedom should absolutely be acknowledged and, in a time of growing state control, defended. But, when it comes to drugs, libertarians have yet to grasp just how much drug abuse undermines individual freedom and erodes the very core of the libertarian ideal.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is simply the old, unconvincing argument that currently (read: arbitrarily<\/em>) illegal drugs rob individuals of the ability to act rationally or purposefully and thus present a special case in which freedom must be disallowed. This canard is as worn as out as a meth addict\u2019s gums. The same thing was said about booze in the run-up to Prohibition, of course: The man takes a drink and then the drink takes the man and all that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nick Gillespie reports on the one war we should be happy to lose once and for all: It turns out that Dick Cheney isn\u2019t the only Bush administration muckety-muck still fighting the last war. Even as the former vice-president took to the pages of The Wall Street Journal to blame Barack Obama for the deteriorating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,10,13],"tags":[104,823,119,668,199],"class_list":["post-26451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law","category-liberty","category-usa","tag-booze","tag-colorado","tag-drugs","tag-georgewbush","tag-prohibition"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6SD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26451"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26454,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26451\/revisions\/26454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}