Sunday, July 23rd 2006
Freedom behind bars
Anthony Gregory, Cal Libertarians alum and contributor to LewRockwell.com, holds no punches in criticizing the incarceration state in today’s Contra Costa Times.
Gregory starts off with some background info:
In response to a crisis of massive prison overcrowding, Gov. Schwarzenegger has called for the construction of two more prisons…
With about 170,000 inmates, it has a higher per-capita incarceration rate than the rest of the United States, which itself has the highest per-capita prison population in the industrialized world…
In a typical example of the failure of big government, we see that no matter how many prisons are built, no matter how much money the politicians throw at the problem, there is overcrowding.
Then he zeroes in on the culprit:
Surely America isn’t the most criminal culture on earth. Why does the United States have the most prisoners? The main reason is too many laws.
More prisoners are locked away for drug violations than all violent crimes combined. It used to be perfectly legal for anyone to walk into a store and buy heroin or cocaine. Then the progressives took over in the early 20th century and began waging a war on drugs, which blossomed under Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, when marijuana became nationally illegal.
People have a right to liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. It is an affront to the founding principles of America to lock peaceful people into cages just because they consume or sell drugs…
At a cost of about $35,000 per inmate per year, not only is keeping them in prison enormously expensive, draining resources that could be used to pursue actual violent criminals, but it is downright immoral.
This all seems so obvious to the informed citizen, but a variety of groups have a vested interest in solidifying the status quo. Gregory goes on to attack prison labor, which has both distorted the free market and enticed corporations to support a never-ending flow of slaves inmates. Combined with the general inclination to legislate morality, we have a disgusting recipe for more state and less freedom.
Is this the same Anthony that had longish black hair? I talked to that guy on Sproul once. He was certifiable. He believed that citizens operating by mob rule should determine if a neighbor has a weapon that is too deadly to be in the hands of a citizen. He took this rule up to and including nuclear arms.
But I don’t disagree with the general premise of this article.
Comment by Donald — 7/26/2006 @ 9:00 am
The Second Amendment doesn’t say “except for thermonuclear weapons,” Donald. Don’t let liberals destroy your freedom to own as many megatons as you can get your hands on.
Comment by IconoclasticGoat — 8/7/2006 @ 9:48 am
Private ownership of nuclear weapons is absurd, but Gregory’s argument on drug laws is sound. Its obvious how weapons possession can threaten public peace, but what about heroin use?
Comment by Mickey Klein — 8/7/2006 @ 3:43 pm
If anybody doubts the grave danger posed to our society by the dissemination of drugs, please, please: you must watch Reefer Madness and remind yourselves.
Comment by Yaman — 8/8/2006 @ 11:09 am
Thanks for the kind words, everyone. I don’t quite recall saying that “mob rule” should determine whether someone can own weapons that are “too deadly.” That is, in fact, how it works now — democracy is simply mob rule.
But I do consider nuclear weapons to be per se aggressive, or at least to constitute the threat of aggression, like pointing a gun at everyone within a certain radius. What I do not favor is using the state to disarm people of anything. And I don’t believe the state should have any weapons that private individuals aren’t allowed to have.
Comment by Anthony Gregory — 8/18/2006 @ 3:10 pm