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 –
…the right/wrong line [as opposed to Dem/Repub, Freedom / Tyranny axis] has to be drawn somewhere in order to have an ordered society (vs anarchy). I am sufficiently non-Libertarian to disagree with the notion that anyone should be free to do anything they want under the banner of "Freedom". I operate from the perspective that an insufficient number of people do NOT have the internal governor to say "No" when they can either game the system or hurt themselves badly.
Using your logic, why make ANYTHING illegal that is non-violent? After all, it doesn’t hurt anyone else, or does it?
If we did NOT have the massive welfare state that we DO have, I might be more willing to say yes. However, unlike the Pilgrims that were of the mind of "Don’t work? Then die", our society socializes the cost of bad decisions – somebody screws up and WE have to pay for it. Making drugs legal MAY decrease the legal costs but may well raise the other social costs. Why? The notion of "The Government will take care of me" has become too broad – which costs me tax money too in taking care of them and their families.
>> Jesus said that he who is w/o sin may cast the 1st stone
Funny, everybody remembers the "without sin" bit and forgets about the ending of the parable. I guess doing so kinda destroys the argument, eh? The situation is that I am not trying to trap anyone here, like the Pharisees were trying with to do with Jesus when confronted with the Biblical dilemma of the adulterous woman. The upshot of that parable was that while we are all sinners, judgment was and needs to be made as to right and wrong (both with the Pharisees playing politics and the adulterous woman who Jesus admonished to "go sin no more"). A large part of today’s society problem, IMHO, is that we put up with too many people who refuse to be judged for their actions (or we are too timid to call them out for outrageous behavior).
So no, <redacted>, I do not agree with you.
Well, then he decided to make it personal – bad decision…
