Addicted to that Rush

Criminal Injustice, Drug War, Media, The Zeitgeist, War on Drugs

It seems authorities are Addicted to that Rush; they can’t stop badgering Limbaugh about his consumption choices. Having arbitrarily decided that ingesting pain-killers is infinitely worse for individual and “society” than compulsive eating, bungee jumping, alcohol or tobacco consumption, the policy pinheads have proceeded to preemptively trample the constitutional rights of people like Limbaugh, before the foreseeable harm to “society” can occur.

Lysander Spooner, the great 19th-century theorist of liberty, held that government had no business treating vices as crimes. “Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property. Crimes are those acts by which a man harms the person or property of another.”

This classical liberal thinks that “incarcerating people for their consumption choices has the consistency of arresting a survivor of suicide for attempted murder. Moreover, if for harming himself a man forfeits his liberty, then it can’t be said that he has dominion over his body. It implies that someone else ‘government’ owns him.” (May 8, 2002)

Be mindful that law-enforced medical treatment must also be volubly opposed. The coercive, therapeutic state is a very poor substitute for the avenging state.

Having come up hard against the reality of it, you’d think Limbaugh would have at last leapt in to denounce the Federal government’s War on Drugs. Even National Review has done an about-face. But Limbaugh is too busy hobnobbing in Washington. (Read “Rush Goes to Washington clichés. You’ll want to barf if you’re my kind of person.)

The co-dependency Limbaugh has with the state is by far the more dangerous one.

Auster Angry

Iraq, The Zeitgeist, War, WMD

Lawrence Auster has requested that I print the following:

Ilana,

I think you were out of line the other day when you referred to me as an “apologist” for the Iraq war. To call someone an “apologist” implies he is completely on board with something and is committed to defending it no matter what. To call me an “apologist” implies that I was acting out of partisanship or emotional identification and that I didn’t have a reasoned and critical basis for what I have argued over and over, which was (1) that we had reasons to believe that Iraq, a rogue regime, had WMDs, and (2) that given the existence of terror groups who would like to cause infinite damage to us if they could, we could not permit the Iraqi regime to continue in possession of, and continue developing further capacities in, WMDs which might be transferred to those terrorist groups. I also said prior to the war that I saw terrible things coming out of the war, but that I couldn’t see a way to avoid the logic summarized above that made the war necessary. That’s not being an apologist. That’s having a reasoned, and very reluctant, argument.

You could have described me as a person who supported the invasion for the reasons I have given. Given the huge number of criticisms and doubts I expressed about the war effort from many months before the war to the present moment, particularly my opposition to waging a war for the purpose of spreading democracy, for you to come out and call me simply an “apologist” for the war, period, as though I were an all-out champion of the administration in the manner of a Hugh Hewitt or a Rush Limbaugh, was not true or fair.

Lawrence Auster

Auster is definitely no Hannity, Hewitt or Limbaugh. If I gave that impression, it was unintended. However, because Mr. Auster’s “reasoned” position was palpably and patently flawed, violating objective reality, natural and international law, and the Constitution—he ought not to have held it. Iraq, in those good old days, was an economically desperate, secular dictatorship, profoundly at odds with Islamic fundamentalism. At the time of the invasion, it had acquiesced to inspectors (was in fact being criss-crossed by teams of them), hadn’t any ties to al-Qaeda or a hand in Sept. 11. It was a Third-World nation, whose military prowess was a fifth of what it was when hobbled during the gulf war. Iraq had no navy or air force. It was no threat to American national security. —ILANA

A South African Tells it Like It Is

Africa, Hollywood, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Race, South-Africa

[Angelina Jolie, Stan actually endures the daily realities of Africa. He has a few poignant words for Jolie and her ilk. Thanks for writing, Stan; we appreciate your perspective.—ILANA]

In The White Man’s Burden, William Easterly quotes a figure of aid given to Africa of half a trillion dollars. So, give or take a couple of hundred million either way, at which point exactly will governments, aid Agencies , politicians and the liberal left wake up to the fact that they might as well have flushed most of this money down the good old toilet for the amount of real aid this money purchased. Zimbabwe is now flat broke. People are starving and a once-thriving agricultural economy is all but non existent. As one travels north from SA the picture just repeats itself. The only real improvements seem to be to the residences, holiday homes , motor vehicle fleets, and weapon stashes of Africa’s numerous dictators and their goons. Starving people be damned.

South African society is becoming more corrupt by the hour, and our national past time is now violent crime (including rape and child rape) and corruption. Apartheid’s fault , right Angelina?
Your article “Angelina’s color coded kids is, unfortunately, spot on the button. Until the Jolies , Bonos and their ilk wake up to the real causes of Africa’s problems, you might as well get ready to watch another couple of trillion dollars being flushed down the same hole ,while poverty, death and disease continue to escalate. Reminds me of the words from Pete Seegers song ” Where have all the flowers gone.

When will we ever learn?
When will we ever learn?
—Stan
Johannesburg
South Africa

Blood On Their Hands

Iraq, Media, War, WMD

On June 25, 2003, I wrote:

“When the administration plants or uncovers a couple of dozen drums of inactive, old goop, minus the necessary dispersing systems, ‘Boobus Americanus’ will easily accept these as the real ruse for war.

That day arrived. Last week, the administration issued a low-key announcement: it had unearthed in Iraq pre-Gulf War munitions containing degraded sarin.

“Hallelujah, proclaimed some of the Boobi. Salvation at last: the reason for an unjust war had been found. The administration didn’t quite go along with them.

War mongers and apologists must either expiate, or be doomed to wonder about, forever searching for a symbolic salve for rotting souls, and alternately muttering, “Out, damned spot! out, I say!”