An old argument has resurfaced in the intellectual press lately, still making the same old mistakes about drug laws that Libertarian have attacked since the party’s inception in 1971.
On May 1, 2008, Scientific American published an academic jerimand by Siri Carpenter that claims to demonstrate everyone is a racist (except Siri and his or her friends, of course). “Buried Prejudice: The Bigot in Your Brain” is very intellectual, very theoretical, very post-modern…and very pointless.
About the same time, the Spring issue of City Journal came out, published by The Manhattan Institute. Heather MacDonald’s article is straightforward: “Is The Criminal Justice System Racist?” While it has a much closer relationship to the rational world than Carpenter’s article, it overlooks the Freedom perspective.
Both articles include looks at drug laws and incarceration statistics as part of their arguments. Carpenter claims drug laws and prison statistics are proof that society is fundamentally racist. MacDonald claims the same data show that the criminal justice system is color blind. Neither article understands that drugs laws are not a war on Blacks or Hispanics, nor do they acknowledge the inherent insanity of these laws.
Libertarians believe laws against voluntary possession and use of drugs are a war against the smallest minority, THE INDIVIDUAL. Where Carpenter says the criminal justice system absolves minorities of responsibility for their actions, and where MacDonald says drug laws free the state from the responsibility of thinking, Libertarians believe individuals are solely responsible for their choice to use (or not use) drugs…and must suffer the consequences of their decisions.
The platform of The Libertarian Party of Georgia states: “We believe the so-called “War on Drugs” is more accurately described as a war on freedom and the U.S. Constitution. It has provided a rationale by which the power of the state has been expanded to restrict greatly our 4th Amendment right to privacy, and poses an especially grave threat to individual liberty and to domestic order. Therefore, we call for the repeal of all laws establishing criminal or civil penalties for the manufacture, use, or sale of drugs.”
Libertarians reject the paternalistic idea that the state has the responsibility of protecting people from their own actions. The only meaningful concept of freedom must include the freedom to fail; and the freedom to fail must include the responsibility of living with the consequences of one’s failure. Some people will abuse drugs and ruin their lives (and how would that be different if we were to repeal all drug laws?), and Libertarians say it’s your own fault if you fry your brain by choosing to abuse drugs. Yes, it is stupid to harm one’s body or mind by drug abuse; but the day stupidity is criminalized is the day we will have lost all our liberty.
