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John Stossel Interviews Ron Paul on Personal Freedom, Drugs, Prostitution and Gay Marriage.
"Governments can't protect individuals from themselves."
"Governments can't protect individuals from themselves."
You have to understand the main reason pimps are able to have such power over prostitutes is because our laws have driven prostitution underground. If a boss is physically/verbally/sexually abusing an employee that employee can go to the cops. That boss can be arrested and that employee can file a lawsuit against the business they were working for. A lot of the problems that are associated with prostitution go away when it is legalized.
Like RP says in the interview..."When you defend freedom, you defend freedom of choice and you can't be picking and choosing how people use that freedom." "I don't believe government can legislate virtue. I can reject it personally and preach against it whether its drugs or prostitution...whether it's personal behavior or economic behavior, I want people to have freedom of choice".
I've always been a little unsure of which drugs should be legalized (PCP, alcohol, marijuana, alkaloids like caffeine, cocaine, theobromine, those in chocolate, etc), but I'd say my general rule is: If people have a high chance of hurting someone else because of the use of a drug, it should not be legal. There are PLENTY of recreational drugs out there that are completely or almost completely harmless (less harmful than caffeine) that are illegal. Even more that are only potentially harmful to the user, and freedom of choice SHOULD include being able to hurt yourself.
To quote one of my favorite Metallica songs:
Do you feel what I feel?
Bittering distress
Who decides what you express?
Do you take what I take?
Endurance is the word
Moving back instead of forward seems to me absurd
http://lyricwiki.org/Metallica:Eye_Of_The_Beholder
benimaru: Ron Paul doesn't want to get rid of government, he wants to get rid of Federal government (well, a good portion of it), and place power more on the local level (state, county, city), where the drafters of the constitution intended it to be. No matter what gets abolished in the Federal government, it will most likely get replicated at the local level, which can be MUCH more flexible. Such as: legalize pot in San Francisco, maybe even all of California. But maybe in New York it's not as accepted, so don't legalize it there. Legalize abortion in state X because the people are for it. Make it illegal in state Y because those people are not.
In this way, we can live more where we want to. ie, in a state/county/city that legalizes what we want to have or do, and not in one that doesn't.
i wonder if they edited around his long-windedness.
I doubt it will be abrupt. Change takes time, and no self respecting person would throw a bunch of people out on the street.
Will all that change happen from RP? Probably not, but great leaders themselves don't usually enact changes, they lead people to it. MLK Jr. was never a politician, never had any legal power, only the power of his voice. But none of us can deny that he held a lot of power, and that he lead many people to change.
Personally I support the leave marriage to religion position RP takes. Which isn't what we have now. I've always found it funny how the conservative right pisses and moans that the government shouldn't be involved in marriage when people are talking about marrying gays, but government can interfere with religion all it wants when it's about saying gays can't get married. If government kept out of marriage, gays would be able to marry and Mormons would be able to marry several times.
As for the rest for the rest of it and why I ultimately don't support the Ron Paul view. To me it's an idealistic view, something that would be great if it worked. Everyone would be able to do exactly what they wanted without having someone else poking their nose into their business. If something is bad in the Ron Paul world it gets corrected by the will of the people. A horrible company that rips off it customers and treats them like crap, well the customers just go to a company that doesn't do that.
Unfortunately that doesn't always work in the real world. Whatever else we are, people as a whole are selfish and greedy, some much more than others. As the world is now the Ron Paul world is ripe for monopolies. The large corporations can simply out compete any small up-start, and once they control one sector they can make it virtually impossible for any other business to rise up. So whether you like them or not a business like AT&T is your only choice. In the Ron Paul world the government doesn't have the authority to tell AT&T they have to share their lines to allow competition. I'm not saying the current system is working, it's corrupt, but it is doing something to stop monopolies, in comparison to the nothing that would happen under the RP government. We should be pissed the system that is in place is broken and try to fix it not get rid of it altogether. If the heating system in your home only half worked would you just go without heat, or would you try to fix it?
Same thing goes for the 'war' on drugs. I'd say most drugs are outlawed for a reason. People will use them to the detriment of themselves and others. it doesn't matter what the consequences are, they will use them. Again not saying our current system is working very well, but there needs to be some level of regulation in order to protect the public from those who don't care.
I know whenever anyone speaks in favor of drug regulation everyone jumps in with, 'but marijuana'. Marijuana is the nerf-ball of drugs, its negative effects are nothing compared to those of meth or heroine. The government's stance on it is evidence of it's broken policy, specially when alcohol, which is legal, (but regulated) and is as bad (if not worse) a drug. But because marijuana isn't that bad doesn't mean all drugs = not that bad. Okay that said, on I go.
I think the sensible thing is to look at where the source of the problems lie and go after that. Find some way to keep the mega-corporations from influencing the politicians so they create circumstances that are favorable to the corporations, find a way to continue to regulate drug use that doesn't end up giving more power to the people selling the drugs and create drug related crimes. In my opinion the Ron Paul way doesn't fix these problems it just changes where the manifest. If the federal government no longer has the power to produce favorable outcomes for the mega-corporations they'll just turn their sites to manipulating something else. And I really don't see the drug problem changing, other than you'll have less people being sent to jail for possession. The same people will still be in control. Like i said, I just think the nature of the problem will change, not the fact that a problem is being created.
That said, is there an industrialized nation where drugs are completely legal (marijuana doesn't count)? Not trying to make a point if there isn't just curious.
The drug issue is also not as scary as you think it is. The way he wants it is for it to be up to the states. So if a state chooses to legalize this or that drug for medical or recreational use that is up to the state to choose and not for the Federal Government to interfere with. I think a better way to deal with the drug problem is how we deal with cigarettes. Cigarettes are safe and legal to purchase...we don't have a whole lot of "cigarette related crimes" in this country because of this. We are able to tax those cigarettes and use that money for education of why cigarettes are bad for you and why you would be stupid to start smoking even though it is legal to smoke. This approach seems to be working well as we have less and less new smokers every year. How many people do you know that will start using heroin if it becomes legal? All it would do (if it was legalized) would make it so that the users could get safe/clean doses at a reasonable price and in turn they wouldn't need to rob your house to support their habit.