-Caveat Lector-
"M. A. Johnson" wrote:
>
> -Caveat Lector-
>
> nurev forwarded:
>
> "The global perspective: a new opium war"
> <snip>
>
> While it is the responsibility of each nation to implement
> their own tobacco control measures, governmental and
> non-governmental organisations in the USA have a very
> special responsibility:
>
> The exemplar role - showing that 'It can be done.' The
> message from the USA is that smoking rates can be
> reduced and that litigation can have a major impact.
>
> Opium and morphine are certainly dangerous, habit-forming drugs.
> But once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of government
> to protect the individual from his own foolishness, no serious
> objections can be raised against further encroachments. A good
> case could be made out in favor of the prohibition of alcohol and
> nicotine. And why limit the government's benevolent providence to
> the protection of the individual's body only?
This slippery slope theory is juvenile and stupid. The government
might as well repeal all murder laws. Because if the gov. can tell
you that you are not smart enough to know that you shouldn't kill
anyone, next they'll tell you you can't have sex with children. Or
even yell fire in a crowded theater.
> Is not the harm a
> man can inflict on his mind and soul even more disastrous than any
> bodily evils?
No. It's not.
> Why not prevent him from reading bad books and seeing
> bad plays, from looking at bad paintings and statues and from hearing
> bad music? The mischief done by bad ideologies, surely, is much more
> pernicious, both for the individual and for the whole society, than
> that done by narcotic drugs.
Maybe bad ideologies like Von Mises' and Ayn Rand's, but otherwise you
can't compare what junkies do to reading bad books and seeing bad
plays.
>
> These fears are not merely imaginary specters terrifying secluded
> doctrinaires. It is a fact that no paternal government, whether ancient
> or modern, ever shrank from regimenting its subjects' minds, beliefs,
> and opinions.
> If one abolishes man's freedom to determine his own
> consumption, one takes all freedoms away.
I ask anyone reading this to do so out loud a few times and tell me
that it isn't an absurd and illogical propagandistic trick to play
upon the feeble minded.
> The naive advocates of
> government interference with consumption delude themselves when they
> neglect what they disdainfully call the philosophical aspect of the
> problem. They unwittingly support the cause of censorship, inquisition,
> intolerance, and the persecution of dissenters. --Ludwig von Mises 1949
A study in Libertarianism at it's most adolescent. And at Ludwig's age
too.
How pathetic.
Joshua2
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