Michael Gerson’s Drug Delusions
Most people can’t imagine an America without a minimum wage. Without such wage regulation many believe poverty would run rampant, families would become homeless and children would be starving in the streets. Yet conservatives have rightly recognized that these are moralistic and emotional responses to what is essentially an economic problem. Pointing out the policy’s failure, National Review founder William F. Buckley wrote: “The minimum wage is about as discredited as the Flat Earth Society…” Yet the very notion of getting rid of it remains something most Americans simply cannot fathom.
Most people can’t imagine an America without the War on Drugs. Without federal drug laws many believe substance abuse would be rampant, families would be destroyed and the nation’s youth would be strung out across our streets. Yet opponents of federal drug laws have rightly recognized that these are moralistic and emotional responses to what is essentially an economic, political, and due to our approach, criminal problem.
In 1995, National Review declared “The War on Drugs is Lost.” Leading this charge, Buckley broke down the troublesome cost of prohibition: “We are speaking of a plague that consumes an estimated $75 billion per year of public money, exacts an estimated $70 billion a year from consumers, is responsible for nearly 50 per cent of the million Americans who are today in jail, occupies an estimated 50 per cent of the trial time of our judiciary, and takes the time of 400,000 policemen—yet a plague for which no cure is at hand, nor in prospect.”
Much like the minimum wage, virtually all data available on drug prohibition points to the utter ineffectiveness of our policies. The primary difference is that prohibition of drugs has been far more damaging to this country than prohibition of market determined base wage levels. Whether measured in dollars or lives—the War on Drugs continues to be a great and unnecessary tragedy.
It should not be surprising that those most comfortable with the damage caused by the War on Drugs have often belonged to administrations that have wrought the most damage on this country. Denouncing Congressman Ron Paul’s opposition to federal drug prohibition, former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson wrote this week in the Washington Post: “Welcome to Paulsville, where people are free to take soul-destroying substances and debase their bodies to support their ‘personal habits.” Added Gerson: “In determining who is a ‘major’ candidate for president, let’s begin here… It is difficult to be a first-tier candidate while holding second-rate values.”
Gerson was addressing the first Republican presidential debate last week, in which the moderators seemed intent on belittling Paul’s position on federal drug laws by using the most extreme example of heroin use, similar to how leftwing defenders of the minimum wage might invoke visions of homeless mothers and starving children. Paul’s simple yet controversial position is that drugs should be regulated at the state and local level as the Constitution demands, just like alcohol.
But Gerson’s review of Paul’s debate performance specifically focused on what the Bush speechwriter found to be a cold and dismissive libertarian attitude toward the very real problem of drug abuse. Gerson is not completely wrong in his criticism. Neither was Buckley, when he highlighted the larger question by addressing the same aspect of this issue as Gerson: “Those who suffer from the abuse of drugs have themselves to blame for it. This does not mean that society is absolved from active concern for their plight. It does mean that their plight is subordinate to the plight of those citizens who do not experiment with drugs but whose life, liberty, and property are substantially affected by the illegalization of the drugs sought after by the minority.”
Gerson believes Paul’s “second-rate values” on drugs makes him a “second-tier” candidate despite any polling data or fundraising achievements to the contrary. Gerson should know, as the speechwriter once worked for an electorally successful “first-tier” candidate. And for the next eight years, through his spending and big government agenda, the once top-tier George W. Bush would proceed to take the GOP brand to unprecedented lows.
If “Paulsville” is the place for supposedly second-tier ideas like drug legalization, “Bushville” was the land of consistent discredited status quo insanity—in domestic policy, foreign policy, drug policy—all served up and made rhetorically palatable to conservative audiences by speechwriters like Gerson. In his later years, Buckley would call the Iraq War a mistake, denounce Bush and support an end to the federal drug war—all parts of Paul’s unconventional Republican platform. Would a candidate Buckley today be considered “second-tier” for his views? Would supposedly first-tier candidates like Tim Pawlenty or Rick Santorum be preferable or somehow more genuinely conservative not only in their support for Bush and Obama’s policies but in their disagreements with Buckley on those same policies?
Buckley wrote: “The minimum wage is an accretion of the New Deal that is not defended by any serious economist.” The same is now true of the thoroughly discredited War on Drugs, a disastrous policy that given its evident failure should now belong to a distant era. That the more traditionally conservative yet unconventionally Republican Ron Paul now leads on this issue, is as symbolically appropriate as the fact that so many of his fellow Republicans still lazily and reflexively oppose him on it.
Or as the late William F. Buckley once described rightwing resistance on revisiting the War on Drugs: “Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great.”
Say, where are those Iraqi WMD’s Mike? Found them yet? You proud of your part in circulating and propagandizing the lies that led us into that war?
To the extent that he took notice of Gerson’s hit piece, the Honorable Ron Paul can take solace in the knowledge that we are acquainted with the moral squalor of his accuser.
When in doubt, return to first principles. Each individual owns his own body. To suggest otherwise is to advocate slavery. It may not be chattel slavery, but it is slavery all the same.
And if the government busybodies feel they have the authority to dictate to adults what they can and cannot do to and with their own bodies, we indeed are slaves.
The silly and self-defeating drug war is only the latest manifestation of America’s enslavement, not to mention infantilization. I suggest that Americans cease with the stupid notion that the state knows best, and that they have the moral imperative to use violence to prevent people from living their lives as they see fit.
I’m not getting the connection to minimum wage. Maybe I missed it.
A living wage (ability to feed, cloth and shelter) is not an emotional response to an economic one in a country that does not grow it own food or produce its own goods because this basically ties the welfare (physical) of people with the ability to obtain such items. If money is the only way to obtain them (verses growing, making or building) then it economics is invariably tied to such matters. It the fairly recent past (before the industrial revolution and in places like most of the world) this is not the case but here in America, it has become so because of the facts that you cannot obtain such items without money or charity. The most common supply of money comes from “wages”. There is the DIRECT tie in. So while in politics it is always more “powerful” to present the “emotional” argument there are instances where there is a logical and direct link that can be shown too as with minimum wage. Now the effectiveness of the policy can be a good discussion (as is often done with drugs policy) but that is not what is purposed with minimum wage. It simply an ideological “button” used to start an argument about “fairness” which is meant to be presented in an emotional setting. Its a ideological agrument and not one “open to interpetation”. What I mean by that is that when the subject comes up you are expect to accept preconceived notions based on your position. Or as I call it faux objectivity.
[...] are specific points of argument that our readers might disagree with in these two recent posts at TAC, I think the key points are unassailable: The drug war is a failure that [...]
Steve Hogan: “When in doubt, return to first principles. Each individual owns his own body. To suggest otherwise is to advocate slavery. It may not be chattel slavery, but it is slavery all the same.”
I see… if I am not allowed to shoot up, then I am a slave.
I am not in favor of the drug war. I am also against silly arguments for ending it.
The money shot in Gerson’s article was his comparison of RP to a “dotty uncle”. Like the “half-cracked” line in his 2010 article attacking the Tea Party.
The message – it must be hammered home continually – is that the Pauls are cranks, and that loons and unstable militia types are the real face of the Tea Party. A tried and true neocon tactic going back decades.
The obvious irony is that plausible cranks like Gerson lied and manipulated us into these staggeringly costly wars, wars that resulted in dope hitting American and European streets at record levels, and at historically low costs. This is the sort of moral exemplar who now disdainfully lectures RP on his “second rate” libertarian values.
@ Gene Callahan,
If I am not allowed to do what I want with my body, including shooting up, that necessarily means someone else owns me. Is this concept too difficult for you to grasp? Where’s the flaw in my logic?
The fact that taking heroin is stupid and self-destructive is irrelevant. The salient point: I either own myself or someone else does. Pick one.
[...] agree with everything in Jack Hunter’s excellent analysis of Michael Gerson’s attack on Ron Paul’s proposed drug policy, but I don’t think [...]
@Joe T
You are conflating earning a living wage (a good thing, that no one objects to) with government-enforced minimum wage laws (a debatable thing, that many see as unnecessary or counterproductive). They are not the same thing.
Everyone, Gerson included are missing the point here. He talks about a place where we are free to take soul destroying substances and destroy their bodies to support their habits. I’m sorry everyone, we already have that. I’m sure after he wrote that piece or while writing it he was enjoying a martini, or a beer, or a glass of wine. Alcohol is a soul destroying substance, the misuse of it by people who drink and drive is responsible for around 10,000 deaths on American highways a year. If we are going to allow people to consume that “soul destroying substance” (and is there really any question that alcohol meets that definition?) then why ban cocaine or anything else? Why let people legally consume one horrible drug, alcohol, but not the others? Any one who drinks and then supports the war on drugs is being horrendously hypocritical. Sorry.
As many have said before, in practice, the War on Drugs is actually the War on Marijuana, and perhaps that should be legalized. But for the hard drugs, what is the plan for their sale and distribution? Will they be regulated, subject to government purity controls or will it just be the wild, wild west like today? Will we be able to waltz down to a dispensary and get crystal meth, crack, oxycontin, and the rest or will we still be at the mercy of street dealers? How many more people will take that first step to addiction,once the stigma is removed? Yes, alcohol and even marijuana can be destructive, but most people use them responsibly. I don’t have this kind of confidence with the hard drugs. People may have the “right” to destroy themselves, but addicts destroy the lives of those among them, too.