Christian Democrats in the United States
Domestic Issues - Drugs and Alcohol If we have not encountered these problems ourselves, all of us have known someone touched by these vices. When individual abuse of drugs and alcohol causes problems for that individual or for society at large, we advocate a compassionate response of rehabilitation rather than the brutal response of violence. As a society, we must attack the economic and moral hopelessness that leads to the downward spiral of alcohol, drugs and violence. We recognize that prisons are a breeding ground for criminality, and we support the release and rehabilitation of all non-violent offenders with no record of offenses against others, property or public safety. Because demand for drugs leads to imports that fund enemies of the United States, the government must adopt a rational approach that enables it to better control that demand within a civil, medical framework. Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
Thursday, May 21, 2009
12:13 PM
Similarly in the 1980's wars in Central America against communism, the door opened for the cocaine and crack market in the United States and began large-scale smuggling, because the opportunity was there.
Meanwhile, the Reagan administration pursued a second front in the war, to combat the demand and black market economic side on the domestic front. They associated the drugs with the worst of the people they had to deal with overseas to wage their foreign wars, so they waged war on the domestic front in the only way they knew how to fight - with outright violence, the same violence they decided to levy against communism abroad.
Then the people implementing these measures came down hardest on those parts of society who had the most to be angry about - namely African Americans and other minorities. On the domestic front, many victims were citizens who had fallen to the economic and emotional fringes of society and used drugs to alleviate (or pretend to alleviate) their sadness, and also many happy dead-heads who had never really done anyone any wrong. Pushed underground, some accepted the illusory "necessity" of violence since they could not reconcile the hypocrisy of a public government that oppresses anyone.
Reflecting back on the covertly violent and overtly economic wars against communism in the western hemisphere, we note that we lost on that front. The Reagan Cabinet's double dealings arming the Iranians against Saddam Hussein and Saddam Hussein against the Iranians came back to bite them in the ass, and there was no political option but to abandon the struggle south of Mexico.
And yet, Central America has not fallen to totalitarian communist control, and it's doubtful that they will. Not because of Uribe's iron hand "balancing" narco-fascists in Columbia. Not because it is economically impossible in the long term to control inflation and shortages of sundries and utilities in Venezuela or Bolivia, or the free competition in the rest of the hemisphere that ensures people will still get what they need when those centrally managed systems eventually fail.
People using the party name "Christian Democrats" in the southern parts of the western hemisphere have helped in reconciling the needs of people as individuals, as groups, and as nations, and restraining violent backlash against one or another faction from the other side of the disagreement.
Part of their success, ironically, is a strategy of coming down from the "grand arena" of good versus evil, and dealing with real problems by devising real solutions that are socially, economically and morally acceptable.
Many may argue that communism was bound to fail anyway due to economic viscosity, regardless of the willingness of post-world-war-two U.S. administrations to levy death against whole populations in defense of the freedom of others against the governments of those populations. I don't see a way to determine that with any certainty, we do not live in that imagined universe or branched timeline, so we can do nothing but guess. But we are nevertheless able and entitled to make moral judgments. If hindsight is 20/20, foresight is at least 20/40, and we have to ask in hindsight if the leaders America entrusted with their common welfare exhibited any foresight at all. Beyond that, we have to ask in hindsight if they did the right thing, regardless of whether it accomplished their goals.
By stepping up onto that "grand arena" where everyday problems are blown up into ideologies and universal, timeless struggles thus un-winnable by human means, these U.S. administrations who waged the "war on drugs" at home abandoned sympathy for the victims of drugs themselves, the addicts, the downtrodden, the abused, the forgotten. They had to leave that frame of mind as a necessity of waging "war," which by the intrinsic violence of the word leaves little room for sympathy. By chaining themselves into that dichotomy, they made it much more difficult for America to transcend the problems of the world, which is the only way to right its wrongs.
It's a good sign that the current administration is at least trying to move government away from the policy of "shoot first and ask questions later" and "kill them all and let God sort them out" which are so common in the elaborate pseudo-logic justifications of military policy churned out by grant-funded think-tanks and analytic groups. As the administration steps down from the idea that drug-users are A) somehow different from alcoholics and B) intrinsically evil, the administration has a much better chance of making life better for all Americans and for all people in the world by dealing with drug use as what it is: psychological patterns which can lead to physical addiction and self-destructive behavior.
By seeing a problem for what it really is, one can approach solutions to that problem. If pretending the problem is something else, some kind of grandiose metaphysical struggle which justifies and invites violence, solutions remain elusive; meanwhile, governments stain their hands with the blood of their people.
war is drugs
The "vice-grip" of villainous men upon the world is not one or the other of the contradictory opposites we are told to choose. You have to seriously look at the history of hard drugs in America beginning in the 1980's. When America began funding General Zia in Pakistan (who imposed rule after an early attempt at democracy failed), heroin came to the United States. General Zia's and others' Muslim piety against godless Soviets, the last stand in central Asia, may have saved the world from a worse fate, and was the reason of the Taleban eradication of the opium crops in the 1990's. The world ought to recognize and be gracious for that principle which unfortunately gets poisoned with a lot of woman-hating nonsense in the most severe Islamic legal traditions. However, opening the door of war opens the door to the devil, and heroin flooded into America.Similarly in the 1980's wars in Central America against communism, the door opened for the cocaine and crack market in the United States and began large-scale smuggling, because the opportunity was there.
Meanwhile, the Reagan administration pursued a second front in the war, to combat the demand and black market economic side on the domestic front. They associated the drugs with the worst of the people they had to deal with overseas to wage their foreign wars, so they waged war on the domestic front in the only way they knew how to fight - with outright violence, the same violence they decided to levy against communism abroad.
Then the people implementing these measures came down hardest on those parts of society who had the most to be angry about - namely African Americans and other minorities. On the domestic front, many victims were citizens who had fallen to the economic and emotional fringes of society and used drugs to alleviate (or pretend to alleviate) their sadness, and also many happy dead-heads who had never really done anyone any wrong. Pushed underground, some accepted the illusory "necessity" of violence since they could not reconcile the hypocrisy of a public government that oppresses anyone.
Reflecting back on the covertly violent and overtly economic wars against communism in the western hemisphere, we note that we lost on that front. The Reagan Cabinet's double dealings arming the Iranians against Saddam Hussein and Saddam Hussein against the Iranians came back to bite them in the ass, and there was no political option but to abandon the struggle south of Mexico.
And yet, Central America has not fallen to totalitarian communist control, and it's doubtful that they will. Not because of Uribe's iron hand "balancing" narco-fascists in Columbia. Not because it is economically impossible in the long term to control inflation and shortages of sundries and utilities in Venezuela or Bolivia, or the free competition in the rest of the hemisphere that ensures people will still get what they need when those centrally managed systems eventually fail.
People using the party name "Christian Democrats" in the southern parts of the western hemisphere have helped in reconciling the needs of people as individuals, as groups, and as nations, and restraining violent backlash against one or another faction from the other side of the disagreement.
Part of their success, ironically, is a strategy of coming down from the "grand arena" of good versus evil, and dealing with real problems by devising real solutions that are socially, economically and morally acceptable.
Many may argue that communism was bound to fail anyway due to economic viscosity, regardless of the willingness of post-world-war-two U.S. administrations to levy death against whole populations in defense of the freedom of others against the governments of those populations. I don't see a way to determine that with any certainty, we do not live in that imagined universe or branched timeline, so we can do nothing but guess. But we are nevertheless able and entitled to make moral judgments. If hindsight is 20/20, foresight is at least 20/40, and we have to ask in hindsight if the leaders America entrusted with their common welfare exhibited any foresight at all. Beyond that, we have to ask in hindsight if they did the right thing, regardless of whether it accomplished their goals.
By stepping up onto that "grand arena" where everyday problems are blown up into ideologies and universal, timeless struggles thus un-winnable by human means, these U.S. administrations who waged the "war on drugs" at home abandoned sympathy for the victims of drugs themselves, the addicts, the downtrodden, the abused, the forgotten. They had to leave that frame of mind as a necessity of waging "war," which by the intrinsic violence of the word leaves little room for sympathy. By chaining themselves into that dichotomy, they made it much more difficult for America to transcend the problems of the world, which is the only way to right its wrongs.
It's a good sign that the current administration is at least trying to move government away from the policy of "shoot first and ask questions later" and "kill them all and let God sort them out" which are so common in the elaborate pseudo-logic justifications of military policy churned out by grant-funded think-tanks and analytic groups. As the administration steps down from the idea that drug-users are A) somehow different from alcoholics and B) intrinsically evil, the administration has a much better chance of making life better for all Americans and for all people in the world by dealing with drug use as what it is: psychological patterns which can lead to physical addiction and self-destructive behavior.
By seeing a problem for what it really is, one can approach solutions to that problem. If pretending the problem is something else, some kind of grandiose metaphysical struggle which justifies and invites violence, solutions remain elusive; meanwhile, governments stain their hands with the blood of their people.
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