Don’t Shoot!
by Max Raskin That, of course, is the natural reaction any high school student should have when an armed officer unexpectedly drops in to speak to his class. Given the penchant police have for the tazer, it was with great trepidation I entered into this special guest appearance. But after my initial (non-tazer-induced) shock wore off, I settled down to listen to Officer "Starsky" level with the class and teach a groovy civics lesson. You know, like he was one of the guys – the "good" cop. The first half of the lesson was an information session on our provisional licenses. "Can you be pulled over for using a hands-free headset when driving with a provisional license?" "Yes," I answered. "Why?" "Because you guys can arrest us for anything you want and invent justification on the spot." He laughed. "Well, that’s not true. But, yes, we can pull you over for that." He then began discussing alcohol and drug addiction. The first point he made regarded the evil inherent in alcohol, marijuana, and other drugs. Because marijuana alters your mood and the THC content is higher than it was in the 70s, the drug is addictive, and anyone who says otherwise doesn’t know what they are talking about. Prescription pills are evil and need to be heavily regulated. Drinking alcohol leads to heavy drug use, which leads to death. There are absolutely no medical benefits to smoking marijuana and anyone who says otherwise doesn’t know what they are talking about. The informed person will immediately spot the nonsense contained in this well-rehearsed sermon. In fact, a contentious youth might even call the cop out on it – but because students rarely carry around medical journals, sociological reports, and doctors’ testimony, they aren’t likely to win an argument this way. So, instead, I conceded that smoking marijuana is playing Russian roulette with your life. Granting this premise, though, I asked him what business was it of his if grown adults choose to harm themselves; vices are not crimes. Isn’t it basic human decency to leave people alone who do nothing to harm others? Does the government really have the right to go around legislating morality? [I prefaced all these questions with the disclaimer that I do not do drugs myself, lest he accuse me of merely rationalizing.] First, he assured me that he was not just some "beat cop," and that he understands the libertarian objection to drug laws. Here was a real-life cop who had actually given some thought to the laws he was enforcing and could speak "libertarian" without convulsing. He even told me his father-in-law would agree with everything I had to say. What a cool guy! Unfortunately, he then spouted off the ubiquitous canard, "Society has decided that these drug laws need to be enforced, so if you don’t like it, move to some socialist country like Canada." Given that this line is patently false, it is universally accepted by dullards who are swayed by the simplicity and aggressiveness of its conclusion. Cheers and laughs from the class greeted the line. Time constraints afforded only one chance to respond. Should I have tried to prove why this argument was logically flawed? I could have explained that the "love it or leave it" mentality is circular reasoning. In order to prove that the government is behaving justly, the cop was assuming that the government has just, absolute dominion over its citizens and it is incumbent upon the victim to do something – tacit consent to the government is seen as morally vindicating the system. But the justness of the zero-point needs to be questioned. If the government is behaving unjustly, then regardless of the fact that it claims the legal right to do so, it is behaving unjustly and therefore it is the politician who ought to "leave it." Such verbosity would not have gone over well. Showing the distinction between natural law and positive law was another route to take. Though society may dictate X, it does not make it so. But I would dare not bring up the Nazi Germany example, even though it perfectly illustrates the confusion between what is legal and what is right. German society collectively decided that Jews did not have rights and by the cop’s rationale these laws needed to be enforced. But that would have opened me up to charges of calling the cop a Nazi. So instead, I told him to leave the country and move to some socialist utopia where he could work for an even more intrusive government and get to regulate all aspects of the citizenry. How could he charge me with socialism when he was the one who uses the power of the government to mold people into his conception of the ideal citizen? America was founded on the principle that man has an absolute right to his person and property and should not be deprived of these rights unless he does something to harm another. The pursuit of happiness does not refer to a happiness sanctioned by the government, but whichever happiness man chooses. If a person wants to smoke pot, take LSD, drink gasoline, or read the Weekly Standard, he has the absolute right to do so. When the government tries to legislate morality, it is behaving unjustly; that there are boundaries to the power of governments does not occur to the socialist. In explaining these principles, I mentioned Thomas Jefferson, to which the cop interrupted with, "Yes, I know all about your libertarian Thomas Jefferson and how he grew pot – but it had a very low THC count back then." That’s because it was hemp. But the thrust of the cop’s retort was, "change it, don’t just sit there in the corner and complain [a witty reference to the fact that I was sitting in the corner]." Though I was cut off and didn’t get a chance to make my point I think it was clear that he had conceded my argument about the justness of drug laws. Now he was simply arguing whether I should become a NORML activist. Fortunately, the class ended before he could impart any career advice to me. April 18, 2008 Max Raskin [send him mail] goes to high school in New Jersey. He was a summer fellow at the Mises Institute in 2007. Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com |
