While I agree with this, it's exactly the reason many governments right now get almost nothing done (and what they do get done is awful): People in power who care more about their job security than their -- or anyone else's -- principles.
A politician's career should be based on reconciling principle with reality. Their livelihood should be linked directly to their ability to do this successfully.
That comes with a certain level of idealism, true, but without that we have to concede that our lives are in the hands of people we don't even expect to care.
It's more complicated than that. Politicians have a limited amount of political capital, and in American politics even getting little things done requires spending a lot of it. Obama put up some huge numbers and ultimately spent all his political capital just doing two things: 1) getting us out of Iraq; and 2) passing the Affordable Care Act.
Ending the drug war is important to some people, but there are tons of people who support the drug war for moral reasons, on both sides of the aisle. Meanwhile, with an aging populace people are much more concerned with Medicare, Social Security, healthcare, pensions, etc, than the justice or injustice of the drug war.
Even a politician who does care sincerely about ending the drug war wouldn't waste his political capital actually doing it, not in face of all the more important things that people want done.
That mother showing pictures of her 4 missing boys in the article this thread is about, I think she would argue the war is immoral.
I think the people who think the drug war is moral, would change their mind if they spent more than 30 seconds thinking about it.
Baffles my mind, and when pressed in person, even pious blowhards admit there are serious violent death problems with their methods --- but the people who support them seem totally oblivious to the violent oppressive death that their war causes.
Not everyone has the same system of morals. A lot of people, probably most, think that bad behavior is socially contagious. It's a premise that is not exactly divorced from reality. E.g. I would certainly be at least concerned if my daughter's friends were drug users, because I do think children and adolescents can pick up bad habits from the people around them. To these people, the possibility of drugs raises the threat of personal danger to their families.
Some people further think that bad habits like drug use can be controlled through legal means. I don't think they believe it can be eliminated, but I think they believe that if we did not have a drug war, drug use would be a lot more common.
Furthermore, those people can justify the damage caused by enforcement on the grounds that it happens to people who bring it upon themselves, by participating in drug use and drug trade. Even this proposition isn't totally divorced from reality, at least within the U.S. There is lots of collateral damage, but by and large the people dying in gang wars are involved in gangs to begin with, and the people in jail for drug crimes did use or deal drugs.
You don't have to agree with any of this to concede that these ideas are rooted in some sort of moral framework. Not a particularly compassionate moral framework, but there is nothing about moral frameworks that requires them to be compassionate.
"Not a particularly compassionate moral framework, but there is nothing about moral frameworks that requires them to be compassionate."
My concern is, they think, and argue that their framework is compassionate --- but they are ignorant of reality and what's actually going on with their war.
Some peoples' morals deny life saving medical treatment. Other morals insist that consuming alcohol desecrates a holy temple. Or that porn is evil, or prostitution a "sin". Why would you expect the morals to be based on reason and facts?
If your daughter was routinely going over to a friend's house where the friend's parent was visibly high on a regular basis how would you feel about it?
What's your point here? If he had a problem with it, he probably wouldn't let his daughter go to her friend's house. Either way, we're still telling people what they can and can't put in their own bodies.
As a result of medical treatment or recreationally? Assuming the latter and a popular choice of recreational drug, I don't much harm will come from a kid seeing a friend's parent saying stupid things and eating snack foods. If the friend's parent was visibly drunk, that would be something to worry about.
It's either up to you and your daughter to decide if going over is a good thing; however; it is not an argument that says wether that parent should be put in prison.
I would suggest you do concede to reality: We give control to other people at the behest of rhetoric about "getting things done" or "everything would crumble without me."
We shouldn't put people "in power" in the first place.
I don't think that's fair .. at least not in most cases. Politician is not just a job. It's a leadership role, moral leadership among other things. Being principled is a major component of the job they've undertaken. If a doctor found a discrepancy between his career and the welfare of his patients or a judge between his career and justice, I really do think they are morally obligated to choose selflessly.
Maybe it's naive, but I think it's possible to have a society where most judges are genuinely obsessed with being just.
The problem therein is that, at least in the vast majority of circumstances, everybody thinks that they are being "just", but their justice is always colored by their own personal morals, which may or may not conform to your morals or mine.
I'm sure that the judge who recently disallowed a mother from naming her child "Messiah" felt like he was being just, but that justice was undoubtedly colored by his religious faith.
The judges who uphold "traditional marriage" also probably felt like they were being just, as their justice is shaped by what they personally consider to be 'right' and 'wrong'. The law itself, in too many cases, offers too much ambiguity.
We want states to have the right to do things their own way on issues we want, but not on issues we don't. If we, as people, support the right of gay marriage, we think that states should be required to allow it. However, if we support marijuana is relatively harmless, we think that states should be allowed to legalize it.
These are just examples, but it's hard to come up with a 'pragmatic' solution for what is or isn't just. If justice is based on morality, then whose morality do we base it on? If it's based on whether or not it causes harm to others, then what level of harm do we allow? Freedom of speech is generally harmless, except when it isn't -- except when it's "fire" in a theater, or when it's your neighbors yelling at 3 am, or when it's someone preaching [religion/anti-religion] in contrast to what I want to hear.
In short, it's a very complicated thing, justice, with blurry edges, multiple middles, and an infinite list of value substitutions that muddy the issue. Even those doing the very best things for the most noble of purposes can be considered harmful by others who are also doing the very best things for the most noble of purposes.
I agree. It's hard. But think that's a different type of problem. This is not a case of disagreement about a moral question. This is a case of politicians choosing politically convenient over moral paths and effectively being dishonest about their judgment.
There are certain issues (drugs prohibition is a big example) where politicians often 'come out' about their true position after leaving office. They don't want to be the "weed guy," so they don't publicly support legalization while in office. This is different from genuinely disagreeing about the correct policy.
Even just honesty would be an improvement. "I think marijuana/gay marriage/whatever should be legal, but I don't think the majority want that/it's not worth pursuing right now/insert real reason they aren't pushing this." I don't think that's impossible. It requires a change from us. We need to be willing to let politicians openly hold a position while not pursuing it in legislation.
For example (I'm not American, so this is contrived), my view on the American gun issues is that widespread ownership of firearms for self defense is bad, but it's going to be very difficult to pursue disarmament effectively when so many people disagree so strongly.
I have, basically, the exact opposite view on firearms ownership, so take my reply with salt.
You're completely not wrong about political integrity being key to the process. At least speaking as an American, we don't seem to have any. I watched a neighboring state's election last night and the result was very close. Very close. Out of over 2 million votes, the opponents were separated by less than 60,000 votes in the outcome.
Of the two primary candidates, the winner was a notoriously corrupt politician who is well-known for being a political fund-raiser and (basically) morally bankrupt, while the other is more intellectually honest (at least, as comparing his statements to his voting record), but openly disapproves of things like gay marriage, and wanted to ban blowjobs. Even the libertarian candidate (and I'm a libertarian party member) was sleazy in too many ways.
Ultimately, the contest was won (predictably) by the one who spent the most money. Which means that fund-raising was critical, which means that getting in bed with money is necessary, which makes it nearly impossible to get intellectual honesty in elections. There are pretty noble efforts to eliminate, make transparent, or in some way normalize election contributions, but that just shrinks the list of viable candidates down to the rich, which isn't meant as an indictment of the rich, but isn't necessarily good for the interests of the hoi polloi either. Michael Bloomberg is rich, and he's been objectively horrible for New York City on a few landmark pieces of legislation (not meant as a comment on his entire term, but banning sodas? Really?).
As pertaining to firearms, that issue is, I think, more cut and dry. Our Constitution says we have the right to bear arms, and the job of our federal government, and its employees, is to uphold the Constitution, or to ratify it where it is wrong. The latter point is important, I think, because while I disagree with the notion that "guns are bad" (which is an argument for a different day, perhaps), I would abide the law if the Constitution were amended in the Constitutionally prescribed process. I wouldn't love it, but I am far more offended by those who would sidestep the Constitution to ignore its tenets.
Either there's support to ratify it, or there isn't. There currently isn't, but even if there were, none of the legislation proposed makes any attempt to uphold the Constitution, and all of the legislation, even that which I support, runs afoul of our governing tenets, and such be dismissed out of hand as such.
Is comming out against the "war on drugs" really a career killer, still? I think some real leadership from public officials would quickly reverse the remnant of public support that exists for this so-called war.
I'd love to know where I could find the stats on actual support that drug war policies have. Although I'm sure that majorities exist opposing outright legalization, I think that the people who support "drug war" policies as they are currently implemented are in the minority.
The way the question is posed to people can have a big effect on support. For instance, saying, "The war on drugs is counter-productive because it increases addiction rates and increases the harm caused by addiction, and should be replaced with a well-funded addiction-minimization and education regime," is different than saying, "Drugs should be legalized because adults should be able to choose for themselves what they put in their bodies."
When I mentioned "real leadership" above, I meant leaders that would make a case and design an alternate policy that would convince voters who are afraid of legalization as such, but who recognize that the drug war is a failed policy.
> Although I'm sure that majorities exist opposing outright legalization, I think that the people who support "drug war" policies as they are currently implemented are in the minority.
Remember, the relevant population here is the population of voters, not the population as a whole. Voters skew older and suburban/rural.
You could probably build a coalition in favour of replacing any number of individual policies of "the war on drugs" with "better" policies. It's much, much harder to build one to broadly legalise drugs.
The two problems are that drugs are much too ingrained in society as something incredibly dangerous and that sound-byte politics don't lend itself well to the distinction of wanting an activity to be not prohibited without actually endorsing the activity itself.
> Among actual voters, the drug war is still seen favorably.
Some elements of it obviously aren't, as we see marijuana legalization advancing (in some places, at least nominally, restricted to "medical" use, in other places more generally.)
A politician's career should be based on reconciling principle with reality. Their livelihood should be linked directly to their ability to do this successfully.
That comes with a certain level of idealism, true, but without that we have to concede that our lives are in the hands of people we don't even expect to care.