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Bringing Conservatives and Libertarians Together
Somewhere in a shoe box in my basement, I have a copy of the February 12, 1996, issue of National Review. In that issue, the editors endorsed drug legalization. As far as I know, they have not reversed that position (notably, they republished the 1996 symposium on their website back in July). Despite taking that position nearly 19 years ago the idea still meets with much resistance among conservatives.
That may now change. In light of the votes last week in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, DC to legalize marijuana — on the heels of similar votes two years ago in Colorado and Washington state — Yury Fedotov, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, awoke from his slumber in his weirdo 1970s architectural nightmare Eurocrat office building in Vienna to wag his carefully manicured finger at America and remind us that our pot legalization violates international treaties. Awesome. As if I didn’t hate the UN enough already…
This is truly a chance for conservatives and libertarians to come together, because if there’s one thing that conservatives despise more than pot smoking hippies, it’s do-gooder internationalist bureaucrats.
Image Credit: Wikipedia Commons.
Published in General
There’s nothing more irritating to a bureaucrat (an international bureaucrat, at that) than a movement toward allowing people to make up their own minds about matters of personal behavior. That’s reason enough for me to support getting the government out of such decisions, even if I weren’t predisposed to support it anyway. The U.N. busybodies are always going to cringe at the thought of freedom existing somewhere in the world.
That issue was actually one of the first NR issues I actually read and started subscribing to NR shortly thereafter, in part at least, because of that issue.
FWIW, NR’s editorial position indeed remains in support of drug legalization, as I was reminded recently on the Mad Dogs and Englishmen podcast. As a non-illicit drug user, I find myself once again in the position of supporting something that doesn’t benefit me personally.
Like most issues where libertarians and conservatives disagree, I think the libertarians would help their cause if they acknowledged that their position has significant costs (as would conservatives). There are incredibly few thing in this world that are universally positive, drug legalization is not one of them. The costs may exceed the benefits of our current regime, but many more lives would be trapped in a cycle of addiction if drugs were widely available. Just as many lives are trapped in a cycle of convictions and prison today. I think it is likely the cost to society of legalization will be less, but I think it is a long way from obvious.
As for the UN, well, I think it’s long past time the UN found a new home. I hear there are some low-lying islands in the Pacific that can be bought for a song. Sure, they might be under sea level in a few years, but is that really a bad thing.
I don’t support the legalization of marijuana, but if there’s one thing I despise more than pot-smoking hippies, it’s the UN.
As always, Fred, you are right.
Also, this cracked me up:
Commissary
The Vienna International Centre offers shopping opportunities to its staff, and the staff of Permanent Missions and other international organizations based in Vienna. The Commissary, so named after similar facilities for U.S. military personnel at various duty stations, offers an international selection of foodstuffs and household items, thus catering to expatriate employees (and selected family members) who may purchase familiar items that are not readily available in the host country Austria. The sale of hard liquor and tobacco products at tax-free prices well below the price level in Vienna causes occasional controversy within the United Nations common system. The store is run by the IAEA (the staff of which accounts for half the staff within the Vienna International Centre) on a non-profit basis. Persons entitled to shop at the commissary have a certain allotment per quarter (especially for hard liquor and tobacco products), depending on their rank; e.g. diplomats have much higher allotments than general service administrative or technical staff. Due to agreements between the UN and the host country Austria, Austrian employees are subject to further restrictions, limiting the tax-free purchases of alcohol and tobacco in their own country to a level well below that of staff members of other nationalities.
Within Vienna, but also amongst international attendees of conferences, meetings and the like, the commissary is often well-known, with visitors often hoping for access. The reality is that the area is out of bounds for external visitors.
In fairness to the UN guy, though, aren’t those international agreements the kind of thing we browbeat the rest of the world into back in the 80s? And how do Holland’s and Portugal’s legalization/decriminalization schemes fit with the international laws? Anybody know?
Also, Fred, howvmany other shoeboxes do you have in your basement, and what’s in them, if you’re saving 20-yr-old issues of NR?
Could make for an interesting post, and maybe a regular feature…
I was going to ask the same thing.
Yes
There is a world of difference between “drug legalization” and “pot legalization.”
Why do we let that useless cloying septic tank remain in New York?
Well, at least low cost hard liquor provides something of an explanation.
Buckets of ears.
And yes, I shameless stole that link.
So you’re saying New Jersey would be more appropriate?
I’m saying that garbage compactor place in the original Star Wars movie would be more appropriate. Preferably immediately prior to the spontaneous self- disassembly of the entire Death Star at the end.
@Cato: and who says conservatives don’t dream of a perfect world? Such idealism…
So if the UN came out tomorrow 100% in favor of individual liberty and property rights would we turn on those principles just because some “do-gooder internationalist bureaucrats” were for them?
Actually, I think it’s safe to say that most conservatives oppose both pot-smoking hippies AND do-gooder internationalist bureaucrats, but I guess some of our libertarian friends don’t have quite that expansive a view of liberty.
<g>
Ha! Hoist on one’s own petard :-)
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Sorry. I couldn’t help myself.
I guess Yuri hasn’t been to the Netherlands recently…..
If the UN came out tomorrow 100% in favor of individual liberty and property rights there wouldn’t be a problem.
No, but we wouldn’t seek their help in implementing them either.
Great minds, Fred. I had the same thought when I saw the story.
To be fair, libertarians can despise pot smoking hippies as well as a conservative can.
Baby steps… start with the easy cases and see where we settle.
This ban on Weed should always hold:
No lighting up at the Saturday Matinee of Cleopatra Jones. Or Cannibal Holocaust.
Do that, and Ima hafta come over and HAVE WORDS with you.
I’d be interested to know what our treaty obligations are, regarding pot legalization. Do we really have a treaty that prohibits it? And are they out and out treaties, or “agreements”?
I have no specific knowledge at all, but would not be surprised in the least to learn that we have signed multiple treaties with half the world agreeing to stamp out the accursed weed.
The argument for legalization has been percolating for over 30 years (and I don’t just mean the argument in High Times, I remember a WSJ editorial on the subject written by Spiro Agnew in the early 80s) but for most of that time, it’s been regarded as the fringiest of the fringe kind of ideas. Facts, I think have a way of persuading people if you wait long enough and the toll taken by the drug war has only now gotten impossible for even the low information types to absorb.
Nope, we’d keep praising and working toward those principles on our own, knowing that the least effective way of achieving them (and probably a quick-track down the opposite road) is through an organization like the UN, even if (at some point in time) it is well-intentioned.
I don’t mind those baby steps, but even the OP confuses them with massive leaps (which he also supports). That’s the problem. The step of pot legalization is not one about which I have much of an objection. Drug legalization is another story and, per Cato’s comment a few clicks up, the downside far outweighs the upside. My favorite argument is this “people in jail for victimless crimes.” Rarely made by people who have spent any time around jails or inmates. As I say, easy to make from your comfy chair at reason headquarters, or from behind a computer screen in upstate new york… painfully ignorant if you’ve ever seen hard drugs up close.
So yes. Baby steps. If we stop there. :)
In any world where such had the most remote chance of happening the very next action of this make believe UN would be to disband itself as its members come to the obvious conclusion the organization itself is a threat to individual liberty. So problem solved.
The 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, interestingly enough it turns out to have had rather broad support.