Ace really serves the Hipstertarians in a discussion of Radley Balko’s annoying plea for judges and prosecutors not to prosecute drug laws, as if this minority position shared by a few think tankers in DC matters:
I guess what was coming out there was my general annoyance with many (not all, of course) libertarians who are very big on this hipper-than-thou, shock-the-straights sort of juvenile attitude. I’ve just come to regard libertarians as the Madonnas of the right, always showing off their gold-lame torpedo bra and hanging upside down from crosses while feigning fellatio on a prop MX missile reading “RAND CORP.” on its side.
4 Feb 2007 at 11:35 am
I’ll have to agree with the vast majority of the comments therein that not only did Ace fail to “serve” “Hipstertarians,” but also did a piss-poor job of fronting for the failed Drug War.
There are certainly some juvenile libertarians out there, and Balko has a streak of it himself, but the majority of them (in my experience, and I’ve definitely encountered far more of them than Ace ever has) are libertarian because of reason and analysis, typically through an economist’s eyes, and are not there because of some reflexive anti-The Man snotty complex. That’s why we’re not hippies, after all. Far from it. That doesn’t keep us from smirking at holier-than-thou conservatives and Drug War dorks who seem to think that one ounce of pot is equal to four tons of meth in terms of what punishment is deserved.
Ace, of course, neatly sidesteps the real issues in his tepid discourse on the Drug War, rushing to the “these are the laws in the books so deal with it” defense in order to avoid any discussion as to the actual merits of these laws. Unless he is willing to argue that every law currently enacted is a good one that should never be changed (in which case he can easily be shown to be an idiot), then he has to do a better job if he wants to be taken seriously. Where is the authority for a Drug War when when Prohibition required a constitutional amendment and Wickard v. Filburn is atrocious law that on its face deserves to be erased? Are the punishments meted out for marijuana possession really equal to the supposed harm that such possession and use inflicts (keeping in mind that many prominent conservatives have changed their minds on this issue)? What about disparate punishments for crack as opposed to cocaine? The list goes on and on.
And instead of taking these issues seriously, what does Ace do? He makes fun of someone’s name, adopts a position that roughly translates into “because I said so,” and then calls libertarians the juvenile ones. Yeah, what a “serve.” All he really did is prove to the libertarian types that he’s a conservative worth mocking rather than talking to.
5 Feb 2007 at 3:09 pm
Libertarians have not yet succeeded in convincing the public to legalize drugs. I posit that this is true because of two impediments, the 17th Amendment and Wickard v. Filburn. The progressive movement that led to the ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913 was the end of federalism/states’ rights and it ensured the massive expansion of the federal government we have witnessed. With no one left to protect the individual states’ authority, the feds began to usurp such power. When combined with Wickard, the effect is that states can no longer legalize drugs. See the California medical marijuana opinion. Better yet, read Judge Thomas’ dissent. If individual states were free to truly legalize drugs, I believe you would see precisely that occur. In fact, if my memory serves me right, hasn’t Alaska mostly decriminalized marijuana. The problem is not the people, but the structure.