Skip

"…We are entering the Third Stage of Liberalism – freedom from responsibility…"

I gotta hand it to him, he keeps on trying.  Not sure he succeeded – certainly not with me – he decided to go almost full frontal Libertarian, problem is, I’m not a Libertarian.  While I wrote a reaction already, let me switch to fisking mode here:

Skip, bad decisions that harm no one but oneself should not land someone in jail. Why should (example) cocaine or heroin be illegal when you can get a legal prescription for oxycotton?

Let’s try the fact that we are back to the Rule of Law no longer applies here?  This is often why Libertarians just don’t get elected to anything – it is just too far outside the norm for most that this question just gets the rolled eye looks.

Why should we be putting pot users in jail for something that grows freely in the wild? Nor should I have to foot the bill for it either. This is a conservative pro-liberty group right?

You don’t want to pay for the jail time for dope smokers?  Simple – instead of merely pouting – do the hard work and change the law.  Simple.

As a libertarian, I don’t believe in democracy. This country was founded as a Constitutionally-limited Republic and people were recognized as having inalienable rights – that which they don’t have to ask permission of the state to exercise. A democracy is 50% plus 1 voting to deny said rights to those in the minority. I referred the 9th Amendment to you and you must have totally overlooked it. One’s right to privacy, drug use or any other harmless, voluntary act is covered there by default.

While I will admit that there are a lot of freedoms that have been curtailed, he just destroys his own argument by invoking Godwin’s Law with the start of his following paragraph.  There is just so much with this paragraph that is just plain awful:

Regarding this being a nation of laws: Nazi Germany was a nation of laws so was it ok to…

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Like I said, there was a response – that the Republicans have social costs too:

Skip,

GOP social issues cost me money too you know… Like the drug war for instance. 1st I have to pay to incarcerate people with personal problems which diverts money from policing real crimes, then they have records which prevent them from getting good jobs when they get out for the rest of their lives – causing lots of recidivism. Then, I have to pay again for them violating probation/parole and/or finance them on welfare and other state programs like healthcare. I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I’m sure the GOP social issues are pretty steep. I say this as a BA in criminal justice and private investigator. Are we still the live free or die state? It’s not fiscally conservative in the least to blow money left and right on the drug war – which has been the biggest failure in recent history. Let’s put the 9th Amendment in perspective and legalize all drugs – thus driving down the price of said drugs so users wouldn’t have to steal and break into cars to pay the highly inflated prices. The economics of the drug war tells the big picture. Oh, and Jesus said that he who is w/o sin may cast the 1st stone. If you agree with these sentiments, then I have nothing further to say.

Read that again, and see if you picked up what I did; the reasons why Progressives spend other people’s money is FAR different than what the Republicans do – and what he was decrying.  

I decided to enlighten the fellow – especially on the Biblical reference:

The "Live Free or Die" State motto pretty much depends on a couple of things:

• people acting responsibly, and when they don’t,
• THEY solely bear the consequences.

I no longer believe that the population percentage of the first and the actions of the State in the second, allow this to be a truism.  Proof?  Look at the budget – not even legislators are responsible enough with other people’s money.

Here’s the problem –

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People haven’t learned that I am usually, along with Rush Limbaugh (heh!), just a loveable little fuzzball.  Sure, I love to discuss candidates and issues and policies with vigor, but when someone crosses the line and decides to make it personal, well, I generally don’t much take kindly to that, and he did:

Well Skip, I hope to God that you never have a kid that makes a mistake by getting involved with drugs, then goes to jail and has a record that follows him for life. It’s pretty cold that you’re so pompous as to endorse putting people in jail that have problems and not allowing them to sort themselves out. Likely, you’re ignorant of what it’s like to get yourself of drugs and surely you must know that jail won’t help.. In jail, people brush elbows with violent people and thus they aren’t rehabilitated for the outside. They just become worse. Jesus had love and compassion for problematic people and he wouldn’t throw them to the wolves like you apparently…

Sigh….you can imagine the response:

• You sound like Obama: "I don’t want my daughters punished with a baby" if they were to make a conscious decision to have unprotected sex.  Decisions have consequences.
• You sound like a Liberal who believes that bad decisions should not have consequences – breaking that natural feedback that teaches people "don’t do that". Decisions have consequences.
• You sound like an anarchist who does not believe in one of the Pillars of Democracy – The Rule of Law. Decisions have consequences.

Actions and decisions have consequences whether you like it or not – sometimes, 

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Yet another email thread where I spent time discussing / emailing instead of blogging. The context started off talking about the "Bathroom Bill" that the Democrats tried to steamroll through here in NH as a sop to the LGBT (er, what initials did I deliberately forget this time – I’m JUST so un-PC  <smirk>) haters (hey, they use the word for just about anyone that says the slightest thing in disagreement with their social agenda; I refuse to cede the use of that word to them anymore).  Rightfully so, that bill was critized highly for being a social issue instead of addressing the main NH issue – the fiscal black hole that the Dems were casting the State into. And being a Conservative, fiscal and social issues concern me and I believe that this subset of an email thread shows how a concentration on a purely Fiscal Issue theme to lower spending can actually be self-defeating.  Plus, I have no intentions of allowing the Progressives sole purview of setting the Public Morality, without a fight, that they will force me to change my private morality.  They’ve been doing it for decades (if not for a century) drip by drip; it’s time to plug that hole.

It starts with this (Tell me what you think, will ya?):

Sometimes there is a lot of heat about bills that don’t matter (like the ‘bathroom’ bill) and now the budget looms.  The NHGOP should have been talking about the budget since day 1.

and someone else agreed:

I would have to agree with <redacted>. Not that I have my finger on the pulse in a big way or anything, but it seemed like a lot of the talk seemed to focus on the bathroom bill and gay marriage and not as much on the budget as I would have liked.

Of course, I could not help myself and decided to wade in – but also tried to turn the discussion to what really matters:

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