Radio Free Delingpole #9: The Great Drug Debate
Blue Yeti ·
February 22, 2012 at 3:17am
The Founding Fathers were all about personal freedom. But did they intend those choices to extend to what we eat, drink, and smoke? That's the question James Delingpole and Paul Rahe took up over the weekend and debate in this podcast. It's a fascinating and friendly conversation amongst two men who have vastly different viewpoints and experiences with the topic at hand. Well worth a listen!
Ricochet members, subscribe here (you'll also find the direct link there). Everyone else, listen in below.
Our thanks to EJHill for his depiction of the Framers sampling some colonial homegrown.
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Jun '10
Re: Radio Free Delingpole #9: The Great Drug Debate
I will listen tomorrow in the car (can't wait) but I have to comment on the superb picture by EJ. What a master! And talk about sacrilegious....
Jan '12
Re: Radio Free Delingpole #9: The Great Drug Debate
Larry Koler, vir bonus, ought not to be flipped away, especially now that I in the perfectly Hegelian admission of the sublated historical circumstances of my own curious admixture of libertariansim and constitutional conservatism have in my last few contributions, let the cat out of the bag.
First, full disclosure: in my youth I smoked marijuana and I dropped LSD. Over the course of a year, I took about twelve "trips." Over the course of about 25 years, I smoked anywhere from three times each week to once every six months. I have not taken LSD at all since 1976. I have not smoked marijuana even once since 1995.
My estimation of George Washington's understanding is that the question of the legality of marijuana would properly belong to the police powers of the several states. Except for devising how this substance should be regulated (but not forbidden) as its commerce passes over from one state to another, it should not be treated differently from any other commodity.
This is my well-considered conjecture on how the Founding Fathers would have approached the issue of such psychoactive drugs as marijuana and lysergic acid. May I never offend the natural law.
Re: Radio Free Delingpole #9: The Great Drug Debate
That was fun to listen to! It was a quick hour. I honestly can't think of anything substantive to add to their debate but I just wanted to pop in and say that I enjoyed it. I tried it out, and I inhaled (the podcast.)
Edited on February 22, 2012 at 7:00amJul '11
Re: Radio Free Delingpole #9: The Great Drug Debate
I was not going to listen but I saw EJ's picture. That was the hookah.
Jan '12
Re: Radio Free Delingpole #9: The Great Drug Debate
Professor Rahe: "Political community" excellent!
"Public functions" appropriate, even Milton Friedman admits in his discussion of "neighborhood effects."
Family and the raising of children: here strict libertarians fall apart. No person rises ab ovo as Athena from the crown of Zeus.
Drugs, the laws--via marijuana-- have not achieved the necessary degree of precision and universality that could dismiss contention. I'll just propose that on the whole M. is no more troublesome than alcohol. But I am sensitive to the Burkean argument that alcohol is part of our tradition, while m. is not.
Practical problem: if 100,000 in California smoke joints, can you really outlaw smoking a joint? Do you really want to put those 100K in jail? Won't the exucation of the law have to become outrageously discriminatory?
Yes, about Aristotle, but in our Anglo-Saxon tradition, the consumption of alcohol, regardless of the numbers and the proportions, is still part of the long-abiding tradition of public practice.
Delingpole's point is worth considering. Crusades calling upon virtue have a tendency to elicit unintended consequences.
Words are running out, but maybe it would be better to outlaw the consequences, not the drug itself.
Edited on February 22, 2012 at 8:53amJan '12
Re: Radio Free Delingpole #9: The Great Drug Debate
I would hate to contemplate the assertion that honesty could be reduced simply to a bourgeois virtue, that is, to a virtue pertaining to one class only rather than to the person as in instance of the universal.
Professor Rahe: I really would like to see you write your own understanding of Hegel, particularly of how he described how an individual could assert his rights as an individual while still participating in the ethical life of state of which he was a citizen (as Hegel elaborated in the Philosphy of Right).
Edited on February 22, 2012 at 8:51amJun '11
Re: Radio Free Delingpole #9: The Great Drug Debate
Paul Rahe is not a useful contributor to the drug debate. He is so unworldly. If he thinks Amsterdam is the most violent city in the Europe... my God. And haven't there been certain demographic changes in Amsterdam that correlate MUCH better, in point of time, than the changes in the drug laws do, with the upsurge in violence. A nice man, but get someone who's been to planet Earth.
Oct '11
Re: Radio Free Delingpole #9: The Great Drug Debate
That was an enjoyable debate, especially because it was not conclusive.
I took 2 things out of it, has it sounded to me that both Mr Delingpole and Dr Rahe where gravitating around them :
1- Substance consumption is cultural, depending on what people learn to be acceptable from their family upbringing.
2- Does government sets the culture or the culture sets government. Which can be a chicken egg problem.
That was a pretty interesting affair indeed.
Jun '11
Re: Radio Free Delingpole #9: The Great Drug Debate
Paul Rahe ought to read the great issue of NR from the12 Feb 1996 "The War on Drugs Is Lost." WFB and friends nailed all the issues right there. Professor Rahe does not seem to have read it. You cannot contribute usefully to this debate unless you have read that issue -- you will find yourself repeating canards that have been exploded. "The teaching function of the law" says Prof Rahe. WFB in the 80s, let alone the 90s was rejecting the notion that "if something is legal, we necessarily approve of it". That's why Prof. Rahe is 180 degrees wrong. It's the right-on lefty professors that we expect not to have done the reading -- not Ricochet or NR contributors. Let us never fail to honour WFB's intellectual precision and moral courage in making the case against the drug war.
Feb '12
Re: Radio Free Delingpole #9: The Great Drug Debate
Enjoyed the debate. I was in complete agreement with James Delingpole when he said that its the people who set the character of the nation and not the government.
Re: Radio Free Delingpole #9: The Great Drug Debate
For the record, I always admired William F. Buckley's generosity and dedication. I never thought his judgment infallible. I remember, in fact, years ago -- when I was a graduate student -- trying to persuade an undergraduate named Rick Brookhiser that WFB was wrong on drugs.
Re: Radio Free Delingpole #9: The Great Drug Debate
Noesis Noeseos:
This is my well-considered conjecture on how the Founding Fathers would have approached the issue of such psychoactive drugs as marijuana and lysergic acid. May I never offend the natural law. · 8 hours ago
You are undoubtedly right about the Founding Fathers.
May '10
Re: Radio Free Delingpole #9: The Great Drug Debate
I don't paint 'em... I just desecrate them...
Sep '10
Re: Radio Free Delingpole #9: The Great Drug Debate
It's always the person, never the tool. Culture and one's social setting ameliorate and/or exacerbate, but in the end what one person uses to sculpt marble another person uses to kill herself. This is what makes liberty so tough (and why so many people confuse liberty with being a libertine). It doesn't help that shame no longer works as a civilizing force. Unenforceable laws that create their own constituencies not only fail to win the battle; they start equally unwinnable wars.
Re: Radio Free Delingpole #9: The Great Drug Debate
Noesis Noeseos: I would hate to contemplate the assertion that honesty could be reduced simply to a bourgeois virtue, that is, to a virtue pertaining to one class only rather than to the person as in instance of the universal.
Professor Rahe: I really would like to see you write your own understanding of Hegel, particularly of how he described how an individual could assert his rights as an individual while still participating in the ethical life of state of which he was a citizen (as Hegel elaborated in the Philosphy of Right). · 8 hours ago
Edited 7 hours ago
I have read some Hegel -- some of in German. I have a sense of him but not a full appreciation. I need to work my way through the Phenomenology of Spirit, then re-read his Philosophy of Right, and look at his lectures on the history of philosophy, etc. I have spent a bit of time tracing his influence in America. In time, perhaps, I could do justice to this. But I must finish my sparta book first.
Mar '11
Re: Radio Free Delingpole #9: The Great Drug Debate
I showed up for a rock concert and I got a discussion on music theory. I realize these two guys agree with each other on most topics but they peddled their arguments so gently they wouldn't have left any impression on anyone who was hearing them for the first time.
Remember, this all got started by Ron Paul's statement that we have the right to put into our bodies whatever we want. This is demonstrably false. There is a mile of difference between a person yelling he hates Obama in his front yard, and injecting heroin in his front yard. In the former, we all realize this person can't and shouldn't be stopped from expressing his right to free speech.
In the latter, we realize this person should be stopped and not once do any of us think, "Oh, wait a minute, I might be infringing on the person's rights." The only thought? That person will harm himself. And the thought happens no matter how libertarian someone is.
Do libertarians really believe all the people who have gotten addicts off drugs were infringing on those addicts' rights? I don't think so.
Re: Radio Free Delingpole #9: The Great Drug Debate
I think that you underestimate the manner in which politics regimes shape those who live under them. Influence in this matter -- as Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Montesquieu, and the American Founders understood -- is a two-way street.
Sep '10
Re: Radio Free Delingpole #9: The Great Drug Debate
Paul A. Rahe
I think that you underestimate the manner in which politics regimes shape those who live under them. Influence in this matter -- as Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Montesquieu, and the American Founders understood -- is a two-way street. · 22 minutes ago
We are a nation of people, not angels, hence we need laws to constrain our vices. The question, of course, is which vices to constrain through law rather than moral exhortation, stigma and shame.
Edited on February 22, 2012 at 4:48pmMay '10
Re: Radio Free Delingpole #9: The Great Drug Debate
Noesis Noeseos: ........
I'll just propose that on the whole M. is no more troublesome than alcohol. But I am sensitive to the Burkean argument that alcohol is part of our tradition, while m. is not.....
The pragmatism argument, I understand, and for adults (if you could confine access), apart from personal moral codes, I agree.
But this argument presumes absolute parallel purposes, and the the two categories are simply asymmetric. If every person imbibing an alcoholic substance was doing so to get a buzz, yes. But not all- probably not even close to a majority- people who drink substances containing alcohol do so to induce any degree of intoxication. Every time you light up a joint, the purpose is to induce a degree of intoxication. Even a perfectly sensible MJ use- medical treatment of one undergoing chemotherapy- fundamentally relies on the intoxicating effect as the objective.
People drink wine, beer, and even the first martini because they like the taste. I still, after 40 years, don't understand why anyone likes the taste, but I am in the tiny minority.
Re: Radio Free Delingpole #9: The Great Drug Debate
My parents had a highball together every night before dinner -- partly for the taste, partly as a way of relaxing. My wife's grandparents did the same, and we now do so as well. It marks a hiatus between the day of work and stress and an evening of work without stress (ordinarily).
There are those, however, who cannot stop once they start. I am fortunate -- not virtuous -- not to be in their number. If and when I drink more than one or two, something kicks in, and I do not want more.
Duane may be right about marijuana use. I am an asthmatic, and only twice in my life did I even take a puff. What I did observe among my contemporaries was that some could smoke the stuff without untoward consequences. Others descended into a lassitude from which they did not return.
I do not know what to think about marijuana. But heroin, cocaine, crystal meth, crack, acid, bath salts -- there my instinct is that we need laws with teeth in them, and the justification is that it is a legitimate exercise of the natural right of self-preservation on the part of non-users.