[crusso]

To be fair it's a complete puritan/authoritarian culture thing. Most of the media avoids tackling the issue as well. If it wouldn't be for John Stossel's show, I doubt that there would be any news program talking about the positive outcome of Portugal and the negative aspects of the drug war itself.

[adventured]

And it perfectly matches up with the numerous other authoritarian aspects of American culture that have arisen over the last few decades.

- Criminalizing anything and everything they can

- SWAT teams abusing and murdering at will, serving warrants with extreme violence

- militarization of police forces

- the espionage state, from the NSA to the FBI

- destruction of justice, through techniques such as parallel construction

- the treatment of all individuals as potential terrorists

- the spread of the TSA and DHS throughout American society, whether it's needed or not, including trial runs of setting up checkpoints on interstates and at sporting events

- military projection by the federal government, war and bombings without any authorization by Congress

- droning, the murder of civilians anywhere and at any time just based on supposedly trying to kill terrorists

- trial balloons for arresting people based on free speech issues, eg saying something on Facebook

- using the espionage act, among other laws, to prosecute leakers and journalists; and or otherwise intimidate journalists, including with illegal spying (tapping the phones of the AP / Fox)

and on and on it goes

[blisterpeanuts]

Not to take away from a valid point, but the McCarthyism of the 1950s was probably equally bad if not worse. And going back further, racial and gender inequality was institutionalized throughout American society. Ask a black man who lived in the 1930s-40s how arbitrarily authoritarian the government was toward him and his neighbors--it was pretty grim. And going back a few decades further, we had slavery, indentured servitude, lynchings, duels and honor killings, etc.

Freedom and equality in America has always been a work in progress, in my estimation.

[Roboprog]

Point taken. It seems like we have been moving backwards since about 1980, though. (Using "Reagan" as the poster child for friendly fascist stupidity, whether or not Gen. Francisco Franco is still valiantly struggling to remain dead)