Pubdate: Wed, 27 Sep 2006
Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution (GA)
0927gwxwes.html
Copyright: 2006 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Contact: http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/letters/sendletter.html
Website: http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/28
Author: Wes Alexander
Note: Parentheses in first paragraph indicate italicized intro to the opinion.

INCONSISTENT MORALITY IS PROBLEM IN DRUG LAWS

(Gwinnett Opinions recently published readers' comments about the 
effects of the illegal drug trade in Gwinnett County. Here, a 
Gwinnett resident discusses the pitfalls of society's approach to 
combatting drug abuse and the inconsistencies of legislation 
controlling how people must treat their bodies.)

The war on drugs is destructive of civil society. Most social and 
economic problems are related to the inconsistent application of 
moral principles in our laws and government institutions.

Frederic Bastiat [a French economist and politician who lived in the 
1800s] said:

"When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the 
cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his 
respect for the law."

Consider the principle of nonaggression. Aggression is the 
initiation, or threat of initiation, of physical violence against the 
person or property of anyone else. Every 4-year-old attending 
preschool gets basic instruction in recognizing and defending against 
aggressive behavior. They are taught that it is wrong to use violence 
against another person or their property except in defense of life 
and property.

Nonaggression is a long-standing constant moral principle that does 
not change year in, year out. It is universally recognized as just, 
because it applies equally to everybody.

Think about political laws that pertain to our bodies. Who controls 
our bodies? Do we control them or does the state decide what we may 
or may not do with our bodies? Is there ever a time or situation when 
aggression is appropriate to override what we want to do with our 
bodies? Our political leaders think so.

Consider the following:

You are restricted from purchasing nontraditional health care. You 
are restricted from putting things into your body such as so-called 
illegal drugs from Mexico or Canada whether they are pharmaceutical 
or recreational. You are restricted from taking things out of your 
body such as an unwanted fetus. You are restricted from consuming 
alcoholic beverages on some days and at some times. You are 
restricted from selling your body's labor below a minimum wage. You 
are restricted from selling your body's labor beyond a fixed number 
of hours without penalty to your employer. In times of forced 
military conscription, young men better not have declined to fight 
and possibly die in a foreign war.

Did you notice that some of these restrictions come from the left and 
others from the right? Both sides want to control our bodies based on 
their version of morality. Both sides are wrong because they support 
law that does not stand on consistent principles.

The moral and just position (the nonaggression principle), is "your 
body belongs to you."

Take an honest look at what is happening around you and see if you 
think our society has retained its moral sense and respect for the 
law. We live in a society that has lost sight of moral principles. If 
you look closely, you will see a society that has twisted the golden 
rule with Machiavellian logic that says "do unto others before they 
get a chance to do unto you."

Peewees to pros, people considered "good sports" bend the rules to 
win at all cost. Our society and most of its institutions stand on 
immoral principles.

Consider these: All's fair in love and war; the end justifies any 
means; might makes right. These immoralities are a recipe for chaos.

We are witnessing the very real effects of long-term voting for the 
lesser of two evils. We should not be surprised with the result. 
Here's how [economist and philosopher] Hans-Hermann Hoppe describes it.

"Every detail of private life, property, trade, and contract is 
regulated by ever-higher mountains of paper laws. Yet the only task 
that government was ever supposed to assume -- of protecting our life 
and property -- it does not perform.

"To the contrary, the higher the expenditures on social, public, and 
national security have risen, the more our private property rights 
have been eroded, the more our property has been expropriated, 
confiscated, destroyed, and depreciated. The more paper laws have 
been produced, the more legal uncertainty and moral hazard has been 
created, and lawlessness has displaced law and order.

* Wes Alexander lives in Lilburn.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman