This Is the Wall Street Journal on Drugs

Something's happening at the Wall Street Journal ($ site). For the longest time the editorial page there showed zero tolerance for anyone who believes that government repression of unapproved-drug makers, vendors, and consumers should cease. An editorial once suggested that Milton Friedman must have been stoned when he wrote in favor of drug freedom.

But now there are signs of cracks in the wall. The latest came on May 25 in an editorial-page column by Theordore Dalrymple called "Poppycock." None of its content will be new to those familiar with Thomas Szasz's writings (see Ceremonial Chemistry and Our Right to Drugs, but you don't often see in a mainstream newspaper what Dalyrymple did: He debunked the myths surrounding heroin. Here's a taste:

In 1822, Thomas De Quincey published a short book, "The Confessions of an English Opium Eater." The nature of addiction to opiates has been misunderstood ever since.

De Quincey took opiates in the form of laudanum, which was tincture of opium in alcohol. He claimed that special philosophical insights and emotional states were available to opium-eaters, as they were then called, that were not available to abstainers; but he also claimed that the effort to stop taking opium involved a titanic struggle of almost superhuman misery. Thus, those who wanted to know the heights had also to plumb the depths.

This romantic nonsense has been accepted wholesale by doctors and litterateurs for nearly two centuries. It has given rise to an orthodoxy about opiate addiction, including heroin addiction, that the general public likewise takes for granted: To wit, a person takes a little of a drug, and is hooked; the drug renders him incapable of work, but since withdrawal from the drug is such a terrible experience, and since the drug is expensive, the addict is virtually forced into criminal activity to fund his habit. He cannot abandon the habit except under medical supervision, often by means of a substitute drug.

In each and every particular, this picture is not only mistaken, but obviously mistaken. It actually takes some considerable effort to addict oneself to opiates: The average heroin addict has been taking it for a year before he develops an addiction. Like many people who are able to take opiates intermittently, De Quincey took opium every week for several years before becoming habituated to it. William Burroughs, who lied about many things, admitted truthfully that you may take heroin many times, and for quite a long period, before becoming addicted.

Heroin doesn't hook people; rather, people hook heroin.

I would go on, but I don't want to abuse the fair-use doctrine. The significance of the placement of this article can't be overstated. Most people support the government's repression of drug makers, vendors, and consumers because they hold a disease model of addiction. It's as though a demon jumps out of an alley and seizes control of unsuspecting people, when in fact, as one drug user put it, "You have to really work at being an addict." I agree with Szasz: we should go back to thinking about habits, rather than addictions. We'll be less likely to go wrong.

Addendum: As a commenter so graciously pointed out, the full article is here.

Happy Revisionist History Day

Since, as Paddy Chayefsky has his main character say in his movie The Americanization of Emily, " We...perpetuate war by exalting its sacrifices" (see this and this), I've long thought that what is called Memorial Day would be better recast as Revisionist History Day. The state inculcates an unquestioning faith in its war-making by associating it with patriotism, heroism, and the defense of "our freedoms." This strategy builds in its own defense against any criticism of the government's policies. Anyone who questions the morality of a war is automatically suspected of being unpatriotic, unappreciative of the bravery that had kept us free, and disrespectful of "our troops."

To counter this we should do what we can to teach others that the government's version of its wars is always self-serving and threatening to life, liberty, and decency. A good way to spend part of the day would be to pick a war and read a high-quality revisionist account of it. Here are some books (in no particular order) you might use as a guide:

Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War, by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel
The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, by William Appleman Williams
The Civilian and the Military: A History of the American Antimilitarist Tradition, by Arthur Ekirch
The Politics of War: The Story of Two Wars which Altered Forever the Political Life of the American Republic, 1890-1920, by Walter Karp
The Costs of War, edited by John Denson
Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq, by Stephen Kinzer
All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, by Stephen Kinzer
Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, by Chalmers Johnson
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic, by Chalmers Johnson
War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, by Chris Hedges
A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East, by David Fromkin
The Gun and the Olive Branch: The Roots of Violence in the Middle East, by David Hirst

A good place to start is this article by Robert Higgs: "How U.S. Economic Warfare Provoked Japan's Attack on Pearl Harbor" (The Freeman, May 2006).

Many other books and articles could be added to the list. The point is this: if we are to prevent wars in the future, we must self-educate and then, when opportune, teach others.

Independent Migrant

I hereby propose that in lieu of the term illegal alien all lovers of liberty use independent migrant.

Natural, Not National, Rights

Somewhere in my reading about immigration, someone made the deceptively simple point that it's not immigration we should be talking about but migration. That's another way of saying the focus has been on "us," when it should be on the people coming to the United States. The discussion has proceeded as if they have no rights in the matter but we do. We will let them come here if and only if we have a use for them. And "we" doesn't refer to a group of free individuals, but rather to a collective Borg-like entity with rights superior to any held by its constituents. The collectivist, and therefore statist, nature of the discussion indicates how far we've drifted from our individualist and voluntarist moorings.

Read the rest of my article at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

No Freedom without Responsibility

Do you wish forever to be swaddled children in the national orphanage? If freedom is to be reclaimed and, as logically required, the state rolled back, we must defend liberty on the grounds that living is indeed worth the trouble.

Read the rest of my article here at the FEE website.

More Gore

Patrick Michaels has a column in the Washington Times about Al Gore's new documentary on global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth." I haven't seen the film, but I heard parts of it on NPR yesterday. The NPR person said it's Gore speaking, but I think it's the guy who imitates Gore on "South Park." The reviewers were gaga ("Where was this Gore during the election of 2000?") but to me it sounded like the old sanctimonious Al trafficking in half-truths -- if that much.

Here's a snippet from Michaels's column:

So here's what Al told Grist Magazine about global warming: "I believe it is appropriate to have an overrepresentation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience."

It would be nice to think he came up with this de novo. But exaggeration of global warming has long been considered virtuous.

"Overrepresentation of factual presentations"? There's a graceful euphemism for lies. I guess he can get away with this because no controlling legal authority has said he can't.

Cory Maye News

Radley Balko continues to monitor the case of Cory Maye, who is on death row in Mississippi after fatally shooting a policeman when his home was raided by a drug SWAT team a few years ago. Radley reports that the brief (pdf) in Maye's appeal to the state Supreme Court is now online. He writes, "To my untrained legal eye, the brief is absolutely devastating. I don't know how anyone could possibly read it and still believe this guy deserves to die in Mississippi's death chamber."

See the update here.

Mutual-Aid Societies, Private Schools, and Salted Peanuts

I'm back home after a weekend FEE seminar in Houston, where I lectured on mutual-aid societies as a proper alternative to a government safety net and why the state should not school our children. The first lecture also contained a section on the revisionist history of the Progressive Era, pointing out that far from its being an imposition by left-wing intellecutals, it was in fact the result of the business elite's seeking shelter from the bracing winds of competition.

Flying home on Southwest Airlines, I got another lesson in this country's crazy product-liability laws. I know some people have a peanut allegery, but this is ridiculous. The package of peanuts given out by the airline contains this important information:

Ingredients: Peanuts, Dry Roasted with Salt.

Produced in a facility that processes peanuts and other nuts.

Oh.

The Neo-Monarchy of George W. Bush

The Bush administration, without court authorization, collects our telephone records and eavesdrops on calls involving U.S. residents to and from foreigners. It refuses to rule out wiretapping of fully domestic calls. Meanwhile, the administration is building military bases in Iraq and throughout the Persian Gulf. And now the president is about to formally militarize the southern border, the better to keep out Mexicans seeking economic opportunity.

To underscore grounds for concern, the administration has pronounced a theory of presidential power that should alarm anyone who wants government power limited. Under the Unitary Executive doctrine of the Bush Justice Department and many conservative legal theorists, the executive branch has enough implied and inherent powers during wartime to negate the checks and balances ordinarily provided by Congress and the courts. Considering that the Bush administration’s “war on terror” is vague enough to last indefinitely and assumes a global battlefield, the Unitary Executive doctrine is a blueprint for despotism that Napoleon would have envied.

Read the rest of my latest op-ed at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

Scene of the Next Blowback?

In today's Washington Post:

More than a decade after U.S. troops withdrew from Somalia following a disastrous military intervention, officials of Somalia's interim government and some U.S. analysts of Africa policy say the United States has returned to the African country, secretly supporting secular warlords who have been waging fierce battles against Islamic groups for control of the capital, Mogadishu.

The latest clashes, last week and over the weekend, were some of the most violent in Mogadishu since the end of the American intervention in 1994, and left 150 dead and hundreds more wounded. Leaders of the interim government blamed U.S. support of the militias for provoking the clashes.

U.S. officials have declined to directly address on the record the question of backing Somali warlords, who have styled themselves as a counterterrorism coalition in an open bid for American support.

Who Owns Baseball Statistics?

The New York Times reports that Major League Baseball claims to own the commercial use of baseball statistics. If MLB prevails, unlicensed commercial fantasy-baseball operations would have to cease operation. Says the Times:

The dispute is between a company in St. Louis that operates fantasy sports leagues over the Internet and the Internet arm of Major League Baseball, which says that anyone using players' names and performance statistics to operate a fantasy league commercially must purchase a license. The St. Louis company counters that it does not need a license because the players are public figures whose statistics are in the public domain.... The case is scheduled for jury trial in United States District Court in St. Louis beginning Sept. 5. CBC and Major League Baseball Advanced Media filed motions for summary judgment that the court could rule on in July.

MLB already licenses operations that use player photos and team logos. But according to the Times:

Major League Baseball Advanced Media, which runs its own array of fantasy games on the league's portal, MLB.com, has decreased its number of licensees from dozens in 2004 to 19 last season to 7 this year, focusing on large multimedia outlets like CBS SportsLine and cutting out many of the four-figure licenses that had covered smaller operators' use of only names and statistics. CBC, which had a license from 1995 to 2004, filed suit to confirm that it has the right to use those limited materials freely.

Interestingly, baseball once took a different position:

When several major leaguers from the 1940's and 50's sued Major League Baseball over use of their names and statistics in materials like promotional videos and game programs, baseball argued that such use was protected by the First Amendment.

Is any comment necessary?

Cross-posted at Against Monopoly.

Beware State-Directed Globalization

Kevin Carson's latest Vulgar Libertarianism Watch is a definite a must-read. It's another badly needed warning that globalization in the context of corporativism (state capitalism) is not what it seems. I'm reminded of something (who else?) Richard Cobden wrote:

[T]hey who propose to influence by force the traffic of the world, forget that affairs of trade, like matters of conscience, change their very nature if touched by the hand of violence; for as faith, if forced, would no longer be religion, but hypocrisy, so commerce becomes robbery if coerced by warlike armaments. ["Protection of Commerce"]

More Cobden Quotes

No one is more quotable on issues that plague us today than Richard Cobden, the great nineteenth-century British free-trade, anti-imperialist, and anti-war activist. He was a true middle-class radical. Here are two quotations I just came across:

Depend upon it, peace must ever be insecure so long as you have armed ships and armed men, prowling about parts of the globe many thousands of miles away from the immediate control of the Government, and from those who pay taxes to support them.

And:

Like the Romans at the Amphitheater, or the French populace in the first Revolution, we acquire the habit of enjoying scenes of carnage, the only difference being that we look at them through the columns of the newspaper. And hence "our own correspondent" is sent to the seat of war to deck out in pictorial phrase, for the amusement of the reader, the scenes of slaughter and wounds and agony which we peruse with precisely the same zest as if we were witnessing a mimic battlefield at Astley's [Royal Amphitheater]. Observe the eager levity with which The Times correspondent at Hong Kong is urging on the fray, calling for "the opening of the ball", and threatening Lord Elgin with recall if he does not execute his behests.

From Oliver MacDonagh, "The Anti-Imperialism of Free Trade," The Economic History Review, 2nd series, vol. 14, no. 3, 1962 (489-501)

Hat tip: Kevin Carson for bringing this article to my attention.

World to U.S.: Butt Out!

Drop everything and read Stephen Kinzer's op-ed in the L.A. Times from yesterday, "U.S. History Lesson: Stop Meddling." Kinzer is author of the new book Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. Here are some choice excepts from the op-ed:

Overthrowing a government is like releasing a wheel at the top of a hill — you have no idea exactly what will happen next. Iranians are not the only ones who know this. In slightly more than a century, the United States has overthrown the governments of at least 14 countries, beginning with the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893, and forcibly intervened in dozens more. Long before Afghanistan and Iraq, there were the Philippines, Panama, South Vietnam and Chile, among others.

Most of these interventions not only have brought great pain to the target countries but also, in the long run, weakened American security. . . .

Today, Latin America and the Middle East are the regions of the world in the most open political rebellion against U.S. policies. It is no coincidence that these are the regions where the U.S. has intervened most often. Resentment over intervention festers. It passes from generation to generation. Ultimately it produces a backlash.

Iran is a powerful example of the blowback from intervention. Kinzer goes into some detail about the 1953 CIA overthrow of an elected nationalist prime minister and re-installation of the brutal but pro-U.S.-government Shah Reza Pahlavi. (Kinzer wrote a book on this: All The Shah's Men.) In the op-ed he neglects to mention that when Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, setting off an eight-year bloody war, the Reagan administration sided with Saddam Hussein, providing him satellite intelligence and other help. The U.S. even shot down an Iranian civilian airliner over the Persian Gulf, claiming, incredibly, that it was thought to be a hostile military aircraft.

Do you think the Iranians might have a good reason to want the ability to deter the U.S. government?

When will the American people come out of their self-induced blissful ignorance and realize that "their" government is their biggest security threat? World to the U.S. rogue state: Butt out!

Hat tip: Jacob Hornberger of The Future of Freedom Foundation.

Nothing Unlawful

George II defended whatever eavesdropping he might be doing (he wouldn't say), by stating: "The intelligence activities I authorized are lawful."

In other words, in his view, "no controlling legal authority" has said otherwise. (Of course, he doesn't recognize that the courts have any role in overseeing his Unitary Executive.)

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

Republic versus Empire

Here is my favorite single line on how empire changes the domestic population:

[T]he difference between republic and empire might be restated as the difference between taking the girl next door to the Sadie Hawkins Dance and paying a Saigon whore in chocolate bars and the Yankee dollar.

It's from Bill Kauffman's "My America vs. the Empire."

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

Rush to Fallacy

Rush "Jail All Drug Users But Me" Limbaugh did it again yesterday. His Blowhardedness, ever striving to be George II's No. 1 brownnoser, condemned the Democratic critics of the NSA's mass collection of our telephone records and showed he is either a demagogue or is actually unable to tell a sound argument from a fallacy. (I guess he could be both.) Here's his standard pitch: The Democrats oppose something George II's men are doing even though they have done or approved of the same thing in the past. Therefore their criticism is baseless.

Wrong. Hypocrisy doesn't invalidate a criticism; it just undermines the standing of the person making it. If Democrats condemn something the Bush administration does that they praised when Clinton did it, that's hypocrisy. But it doesn't mean the Bush administration is right to do it. It may mean Clinton was wrong to do it. What about princpled critics who condemn both administrations for their misconduct? Doesn't Limbaugh have to concede that criticism from a principled person is valid? That sounds like relativism to me: For Limbaugh, an argument is valid or invalid depending on who makes it.

Limbaugh has used this bogus line of attack many times. He once introduced something of a twist to the argument. When he got caught using more painkillers than the state's attorney thought he should be using, Drug Warrior Limbaugh said he wasn't a hypocrite because his prohibitionist stance is still valid. If you spend too much time trying to make sense of that, you'll give yourself a headache.

What should we expect? Intelligent discourse? The Doctor of Democracy heads the Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies for gosh sakes. (Remember when conservatives said, "This is a republic not a democracy?")

In his contortions to defend the NSA, he said that to be consistent, critics should demand that the agency get a warrant before looking in the telephone book, which contains all our phone numbers. Yep, that sounds like advanced conservative thinking to me.

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

Another Psychiatric Political Prisoner

Anyone who values liberty should read about this travesty of justice over at Rad Geek People's Daily. Here's a taste:

Cleveland antiwar activist Carol Fischer is being held incommunicado in the psychiatric [section] of the Cuyahoga County jail in on the orders of Judge Timothy McGinty. Fischer, who at 53 years old stands 5'4" and weighs 130 pounds, was convicted of a "felonious assault" she allegedly committed against two Cleveland Heights police officers last year. The cops claim that Fischer bit and tried to hit them when they arrested her for posting "Bush Step Down" posters in violation of the city sign ordinance.

Locking up political dissidents in psychiatric wards is what they used to do in the Soviet Union. Free Carol!

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

They Think We're Morons

Rule #1 in the Bush administration: When you get caught, insult the America people's intelligence.

USA Today learned that the NSA, with the cooperation of most of the big phone companies, is collecting phone records of Americans who are not suspected of wrongdoing. (Can we sue our phone company for breach of privacy?) So what does George II do? What he always does -- treats us like morons. He assures us of something (we are not being listened in on) that we have no reason to believe (he once said there was no warrantless eavesdropping), and he condemns the revelation as a threat to national security. That latter card is getting a bit worn. If bin Laden didn't think the U.S. government was eavesdropping in every possible way, he'd have been caught by now. The president thinks bin Laden is a moron too.

P.S.: Here's a laugher. George II's Justice Dept. was supposed to "investigate" George II's NSA's warrantless wiretapping of people in the U.S. suspected of talking to presumed terrorists abroad. The "investigation" came to a screeching halt, however, because the NSA refused to give the "investigators" the required security clearances. Earlier, when Congress asked about the NSA program, Atty. Gen. Alberto "Quaint" Gonzales said that warrantless wiretapping of purely domestic phone calls may not be illegal. This just gets better all the time, doesn't it?

Hillary vs. McCain? I'll take Hillary

George Will reports today that Sen. John McCain, a presidential aspirant, recently told radio guy Don Imus:

I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I'd rather have the clean government.

In other words, his conception of "clean" government takes precedence over free political speech. As Will asks, if McCain ever takes the oath to defend the Constitution, "what would he mean?" It is amazing that McCain is seen as a refreshing political personality. He's as reactionary and as power-lusting as they get. (And a sanctimonious warmonger to boot.) Will correctly notes that people like McCain, obsessed with campaign finance, hold two propositions at the same time:

Proof that incumbent politicians are highly susceptible to corruption is the fact that the government they control is shot through with it. Yet that government should be regarded as a disinterested arbiter, untainted by politics and therefore qualified to regulate the content, quantity and timing of speech in campaigns that determine who controls the government. In the language of McCain's Imus appearance, the government is very much not "clean," but it is so clean it can be trusted to regulate speech about itself.

If in 2008 it's Hillary versus McCain, I'm for Hillary, for two reasons: It'll keep McCain out of office, and the congressional Republicans will act more like an opposition party. Yeah, anybody but McCain.

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.