America's War on Drugs - A Nation of Suspects - Thursday, October 09, 2008
by: John Hamilton
This nation's incredibly bizarre and brutal War on Drugs is officially 26 years old this month; 26 years of American citizens being treated as criminals even when innocent; of having our rights violated in a twisted, Rape of Nanking-like manner by our very own government; 26 years of having our rights chipped away like barnacles from a ship's hull. And for what? Drugs are still readily available, they're comparatively cheaper, and they're typically of a higher quality than they were 26 years ago. And guess what? In a free society with a properly free market, that's exactly as it should be.
Let's face a simple truth that no politician will dare acknowledge, yet alone discuss; our War on Drugs was doomed from the start. It had to fail -- and it has, spectacularly -- because drug usage by American citizens is none of the government's business.
Yes, you read correctly, Dear Friends; it isn't anyone in government's business if you decide to fire up a spliff on your back porch on a Friday night; it's no one's official business but your own if you feel like downing some E at a club on Saturday night. It's not even government's concern if you decide to smoke crack all night long until your paycheck is gone, along with half your brain. None of those things are government's business until you violate someone else's rights in your intoxicated state.
But we've allowed it to become government's business because so many people have bought into the lame BS spewed by hubris-filled poliicians ... one of whom, by the way, is Mr. Change, Jr. himself, Joe Biden.
Yes, back in the 80's, Joe Biden was chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and he is the person most responsible for passing the idiotic, brutal laws that we think of as today’s War on Drugs. He used hearings “to mislead his colleagues and the public… on drug policy where police, prosecutors and DEA officials got the opportunity [to speak] while opponents were kept out,” says Kevin Zeese, a former director of Common Sense for Drug Policy and a leading drug-law reformer in Washington, D.C. since the 1980s. “Pick a drug law you don’t like from the last 26 years and thank Senator Biden.”
Obama's vice agent of Change helped usher in, among other things, that dangerous and vile creature known as Mandatory Minimum Sentencing, which unconstitutionally took power from the Judiciary by requiring judges to be nothing more than robotic, assembly line enforcers for governmental edicts, no matter how vicious and wrong. Biden helped create the current climate which holds each and every one of us as guilty scum who must prove our innocence by allowing governmetal intrusion and abuses of power or risk imprisonment.
Biden is the Father of such illegitimate children as the No Knock Warrant; laws which allow the police to detain you against your will if you refuse to allow a vehicle search during a traffic stop while they bring in the dope-sniffing dogs (which, by the way, are finally being revealed to turn up false positives over 50% of the time in many cases); and the notion that we are nothing more than a Nation of Suspects to be dealt with as government sees fit, without safeguards or balances.
The fact of the matter is that each of us is responsible for allowing these outrageous abuses of power to be brought into existence; and it's going to be up to us to foster any change that may finally happen.
Despite his rhetoric to the contrary, change isn't gonna come from Joe Biden, unless that change is more government power over your life, not less.
Comments: 1
I didn't know that about Joe Biden; but then again, I wasn't even born until 1988. :-) Who says you can't learn something from the radio?
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