Mexico

The Drug War at 40: Fascist and a Failure

by on June 10, 2011 @ 12:37 am · 22 comments

in Drug Policy, Police Statism

Nope, still not workingThe War on People Who Use Drugs, colloquially known as the “drug war”, turns 40 next week.  Although the U. S. government has criminalized various substances used for medicinal or recreational purposes for nearly a century, the modern drug war began during the Nixon administration, with his announcement that the U. S. government would actively prosecute a “war on drugs”.   This followed the passage of the Comprehensive Drug Abuse Prevention and Control Act of 1970; Nixon then established the Drug Enforcement Administration in 1973 to oversee all of the government’s interdiction efforts.  Since then, the drug war has consumed more money, and more lives, than any of the drugs which the state has aimed to eradicate, and has completely failed to achieve any of its intended goals.  Drugs are more available than ever before, and although usage has gone down for some drugs (and increased for others), it can be attributed as much to changing tastes in recreational drug usage as to the state’s interdiction efforts.

And at what cost?

Even as the evidence piles up against the effectiveness of the drug war, the statist media continue to foment hysteria over the next grave danger facing American youths.  In the 1980s, it was crack, as alarmist government-led propaganda created a moral panic that raised crack’s profile and possibly fueled its rapid proliferation throughout American inner cities.  These days it may be salvia.  Or nutmeg.  You never know if your spice rack holds the gateway drug that enslaves the minds of your children.

This is not a “war on drugs”.  It is a declared war on the people by their government.  Even if one believes the state, at a minimum, is necessary to protect life, liberty, and property — a sentiment I don’t share but recognize that many libertarians do — once it begins attacking, killing, and imprisoning its own citizens for the non-crime of voluntarily selling or using plants or chemical substances, the state loses any moral authority to govern.

And now Russia is declaring a “total war” on drugs.  Either the Kremlin has developed highly selective amnesia, or just hasn’t paid attention over the past 40 years as other countries have tried, and miserably failed, to stem the flow of illicit drugs.  But given Russia’s historic tendency to totalitarianism, this just proves that the drug war isn’t about protecting innocent people from the evil purveyors of narcotics, but about extending and entrenching state power over everyone’s lives.

Until we assume responsibility for our own actions, and reject the state’s authority to rule over us, the drugs, cash, and blood will continue to flow unabated.

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Mexico: The War Party’s New Target?

by on November 27, 2010 @ 3:13 pm · 1 comment

in Drug Policy, Immigration, Imperialism, Police Statism, The Right, War

For decades, some elements of the Right (occasionally abetted by people who should have known better) have peddled the notion that Mexico has created a vast and well-organized “fifth column” within the United States dedicated to La Reconquista — the re-conquest of territories seized by the U.S. during the Mexican-American War. In this scenario, non-assimilated Mexicans by the millions are stealthily enlisting in a campaign of subversion orchestrated by the Mexican government with the help of foundation-funded anti-American groups on this side of the border — and, when the time is right, this fifth column will erupt in an orgy of violence and mayhem.

Whatever revanchist sentiments may exist in Mexico are the residue of Washington’s seizure of roughly half the country through a war of aggression. Washington’s proxy narco-war, which has killed tens of thousands of people since 2006 and displaced hundreds of thousands more, has done nothing to palliate those feelings. An actual U.S. invasion might be the only thing that would turn the alarmist fantasy of a nationalistic uprising on the part of Mexicans living on the U.S. side of the border into something akin to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Since 2007, when the Fed’s most recent economic bubble collapsed, immigration from Mexico has tapered off dramatically. In Arizona, immigration (both legal and illegal) and violent crime have both been in decline for a decade. Yet the state’s Republican leadership, and much of its law enforcement apparatus — from Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the corrupt septuagenarian headline whore, to Pinal County Sheriff  Paul Babeau, his younger and more telegenic understudy — insist that the state is under unremitting siege.  Governor Jan Brewer,  who claimed that the “majority” of illegal immigrants from Mexico are “mules” in the employ of drug cartels and that illegal immigrants had committed “beheadings” in Arizona, was headed for electoral oblivion following an unpopular tax increase — until she seized on the immigration issue, which propelled her to a dramatic political recovery.

[Keep reading…]

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Anti-immigration libertarians are treading in dangerous waters

by on April 16, 2010 @ 11:13 am · 11 comments

in (Austrian) Economics, Immigration, Police Statism, Totalitarianism

There's only one way for government to effectively secure its borders.

In a perfect world (Ancapistan/Libertopia), say libertarians who want to restrict immigration, we could have open borders. For one thing, they say, all property would be privatized, so it would be up to individuals to decide who will be allowed to traverse their land, roads, and waterways. Furthermore, they explain, there would be no massive welfare state encouraging the neighboring country’s proletariat to immigrate for all the freebies. There would be no arbitrary government rules about “natural born citizenry” which encourage pregnant mothers to try to birth their babies on American (that’s the country we’re talking about here, after all) soil thus securing the right to live in America for their child, and by extension (since it’s inhumane to break up the mother-child family unit) their right to live there as well.

Now, I’ve seen libertarians argue that the Mexicans (let’s face it, that’s really whom we’re talking about) who cross the border illegally are mostly looking for the freebies, and I’ve seen libertarians argue that the Mexicans who cross the border illegally are mostly looking for work which Americans don’t want to do themselves (like picking lettuce all day in fields of pesticide). Who’s right? I haven’t a clue. I’m sure the American welfare state is very enticing to the neighboring poor. I’m sure without it, there’d be less immigration from Mexico. But none of this matters to me. I’m not even going to make the pro-liberty argument which by definition is against government controlled borders.

What I want to do is concede all of the above arguments to the anti-immigration libertarians. Let’s assume that an enormous welfare state requires heavily regulated or possibly even closed borders. I don’t believe this to be the case, but let’s stipulate that it is. Now what? What are these libertarians implicitly assuming?

That the government can efficiently and effectively manage the borders. If there is one thing every libertarian should know about government it’s that government cannot efficiently or effectively perform any “service” without resorting to totalitarian police-statism. When the government minimizes costs (don’t laugh), it performs at woefully substandard levels. Think of the levees around New Orleans which failed during Hurricane Katrina, for instance. For adequate quality of service, for instance the Hoover Dam or those stretches of elevated interstate cutting through the marshes and swamps of Louisiana (very fine work), the government has to overpay enormously. The systemic defects inherent in government bureaucracy cannot be overcome, as they are due (mostly) to the absence of a profit motive. The government simply cannot provide quality services at market prices; often, the government cannot provide quality service at any price. What the government can do, however, is provide brutality very cheaply, for a while.

So, while the government won’t be able to build proper border walls at a reasonable price, what it can do is man whatever type of walls it does build (cheap, low quality walls, or massively overpriced, high quality walls) with soldiers who have orders to shoot-on-sight and ask questions later, if at all. Tossing several thousand mines outside those walls wouldn’t cost much either — we could describe it as brutally efficient. Why not require every citizen to carry government identification cards and make the penalty for failure to comply (accidental or intentional) very severe? We have examples of countries which have managed to secure their borders effectively (for the most part). I’ll name three: The former Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba. Governments which haven’t degenerated into police states just cannot accomplish it.

So I pose this question to those libertarians who claim that as long as we have a colossal welfare state, we must have strict immigration controls: what’s your libertarian plan for accomplishing this?

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