The fact or action of becoming a god; deification; Glorification, exaltation; crediting someone with extraordinary power or status; A glorified example or ideal; the apex or pinnacle (of a concept or belief); Loosely, release from earthly life, ascension to heaven;

–Wiktionary.org

And as the title declares, the painting depicts George Washington, assumed into heaven as a deity. The angel on the left is, of course, holding the symbol of the fasces. Because, if there’s one thing the state will worship, it’s itself:

This is just a closeup of the center. Click on the image for a full, hi-res version of the complete painting.

What a coincidence that a giant painting depicting the deification of the state just happened to be completed right at the moment in history when the Federal government was crushing the final vestiges of state independence at Appomattox. The only thing I’m surprised about is that it isn’t called the Apotheosis of Lincoln. I guess even he couldn’t be that brazen.

From the cover of a two-volume set, Abraham Lincoln: The True Story of a Great Life by William Herndon and Jesse Weik. Published in 1892 and reprinted in 1913, both editions had the same cover. The seminary library where I currently work had both editions, but we have gotten rid of both editions. Not necessary to the mission of a seminary library today. But someone thought it was once…

–Charles Featherstone, LRC

To which David Kramer replied:

Charles—You didn’t need to find some obscure book that honors Lincoln with the symbol of Fascism. Under both his left and right hands of the Lincoln Memorial sculpture you can see the Fascist symbol sans ax head.

–David Kramer, LRC

Tom Dilorenzo then pointed out:

Charles, it is relevant that the co-author of the book on Lincoln from your library which displays the fasces, the symbol of fascism, on the cover, was Lincoln’s longtime law partner, William Herndon. He knew Lincoln as well as anyone, even better than Lincoln’s wife. And yes, as David points out, the fasces is right there on Dishonest Abe’s armchair on which he sits in his memorial in D.C. (As Clyde Wilson once said, the symbol of America has been transformed from George Washington on his white horse to a corporate lawyer/lobbyist in an armchair).

Dating from the Roman Empire, the fasces stood for Government Power and Unity. Dictatorial government that crushes all dissenters, in other words. “Unity” is coerced unity that comes from governmental military “power,” not persuasion. This is the kind of “unity” that existed in the Soviet Union, and Germany and Italy during the 1930s and early 40s. Totalitarianism, in a word.

–David Kramer, LRC

It’s disgusting that so many Americans have been duped by court historians into mock worship of politicians. Lincoln presided over the slaugther of 620,000 American lives. More than any other war in U.S. history. He deserves scorn and judgement. Not, a monument to his fascism. How is that any different than Lenin’s tomb?

It is not in every case easy or pleasant to ask men of the nation to leave their homes and women of the nation to give their men to the service of the nation. But the men and women of America have never held back even when it has meant personal sacrifice on their part if that is sacrifice for the common good.

The greatest attack that has ever been launched against freedom of the individual is nearer the Americas than ever before. To meet that attack we must prepare beforehand — for preparing later may and probably would be too late.

There is, moreover, another enemy at home. That enemy is the mean and petty spirit that mocks at ideals, sneers at sacrifice and pretends the American people can live by bread alone. If the spirit of God is not in us, and if we will not prepare to give all that we are to preserve Christian civilization in our own land, we shall go to destruction.

–F.D.R, Smokey Mtn. Nat’l Park Dedication Speech

The tactic of labeling every nation that doesn’t play ball with the administration as an enemy of freedom is a time-honored tradition. George Bush used the same tact:

On September 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country. Americans have known wars, but for the past 136 years, they have been wars on foreign soil, except for one Sunday in 1941. Americans have known the casualties of war, but not at the center of a great city on a peaceful morning. Americans have known surprise attacks but never before on thousands of civilians. All of this was brought upon us in a single day, and night fell on a different world, a world where freedom itself is under attack.

–George W. Bush, Joint Session of Congress

Oddly enough, Bush referenced Pearl Harbour in his speech. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s without doubt that FDR had foreknowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbour because he specifically goaded the Japanese into attacking by following Arthur McCollum’s eight-action plan. This plan was meant to force Japan into a first strike against the U.S., since that would allow the U.S. to enter the war with popular support. Japan had allied itself to Germany and Italy, so that any attack by it would allow the U.S. to attack all of the countries included in the “axis powers” (or “axis of evil” in Bush-speak). Here’s some pertinent quotes to support this:

“The Roosevelt strategy of maneuvering the Japanese into striking the first blow at America was unknown to us,” [Admiral Husband] Kimmel wrote in his book, Admiral Kimmel’s Story, published in 1954. His first suspicions that someone in high office in Washington had consciously pursued a policy that led straight to Pearl Harbor “did not occur to him until after December 7, 1941.”

Richardson’s removal on February 1, 1941, strengthened the position of McCollum. Only five months earlier, in mid-September 1940, Germany and her Axis partner, Italy, had signed a mutual-assistance alliance with Japan. The Tripartite Pact committed the three partners to assist each other in the event of an attack on any one of them. McCollum saw the alliance as a golden opportunity. If Japan could be provoked into committing an overt act of war against the United States, then the Pact’s mutual assistance provisions would kick in. It was a back-door approach: Germany and Italy would come to Japan’s aid and thus directly involve the United States in the European war.

The number one problem for the United States, according to McCollum, was mobilizing public support for a declaration of war against the Axis powers. He saw little chance that Congress would send American troops to Europe. Over the objections of the majority of the populace, who still felt that European alarmists were creating much ado about nothing, he called for the Administration to create what he called “more ado”: “It is not believed,” wrote McCollum, “that in the present state of political opinion the United States government is capable of declaring war against Japan without more ado.”

His solution to the political stalemate: use the eight proposed actions to provoke Japan into committing an overt act of war against the United States, thus triggering military responses from the two other signers of the Tripartite Pact. An allusion to McCollum’s eight actions was recorded by Assistant Secretary of State Breckenridge Long. He wrote that on October 7, 1940, he learned of a series of steps involving the US Navy and that one included concentrating the fleet at Honolulu to be ready for any eventuality. “It looks to me as if little by little we will face a situation which will bring us into conflict with Japan,” Long wrote in his diary.

–Stinnett, Day of Deceit

The point I’m trying to make is that a simple ideology that says “they are bad guys and we’re good guys” or “they hate our freedom” is just way too clean and tidy to be real. I mean, seriously, who “hates freedom” except government? Isn’t it far more believable that the reason we are attacked by terrorists is not because they “hate our freedom”, but because they hate the things our government does to their life? After all, the west has been meddling in the middle-east for over a century. Just read The First World War and see how England invaded middle-eastern countries left and right for no apparent reason.

What’s more believable in all of these situations is that, in order for governments to maintain their legitimacy with their own people they must find convenient enemies. In the 40′s it was the Japanese. Today it’s the middle-east. What we are spoon-fed by the media is 75% propaganda to deliver a constant theme that we all come to believe in. Something like: “The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour was unprovoked.” The reality behind the headlines is almost always way more complicated and orchestrated than that. You have to look behind the curtain.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I’m not anti-war, and I’m definitely not a pacifist. What I’m opposed to is standing armies and governments being the only ones allowed to legally use force. It’s dangerous and it leads to just the type of things we see over and over. Namely, politicians using military action for political purposes, not defense.

Someone once described Roe vs. Wade as the “Pearl Harbor” of the evangelical pro-life conscience. Pearl Harbor is an apt metaphor. Before that date of infamy, foreign policy isolationism seemed to be a legitimate American option. The “America First” committees and some of the most influential figures in the United States Congress argued that Hitler’s war was none of our concern. We should tend to ourselves, and we could deal with whomever won in Europe and the Pacific when all the dust had settled.

After Pearl Harbor, the shortsightedness, and indeed utopianism, of isolationism was seen for what it was.

–-Russell D. Moore, Blog

Before I move on to analysis, I’d like to correct, for the millionth time, the misuse of this word: isolationism. North Korea is isolationist. Laos is isolationist. Pre-WWII America was non-interventionist. Trade and dialogue with other countries was robust. The only thing America didn’t engage in was military intervention into foreign wars. Isolationism is a politically pejorative term meant to taint the argument toward the speaker’s position before they’ve even made their argument. It’s poisoning the well. Moving on…

Given his above comments, I can only surmise that Dr. Moore is moving into territory here where he hasn’t done much research. The Pearl Harbour period that he describes leaves out crucial context that invalidates his later conclusion that “after Pearl Harbor, the shortsightedness, and indeed utopianism, of isolationism was seen for what it was.” I’m guessing here that by “seen for what it was” he means that the collective American mind began to think that staying out of foreign wars wouldn’t assure them of peace. This leads to two questions. First, why did the American population move toward non-interventionism in the first place? And, secondly, was Pearl Harbour a legitimate proof of the failure of non-interventionism? Let’s explore these.

It is a fact that before Pearl Harbour, polls were showing as high as 80% of the American people were opposed to entering WWII. The reason for this opposition to involvement in the war goes back to WWI. In the words of John Denson, “World War I and World War II were really one war with a twenty year recess and it was the harsh and unfair Versailles Treaty which allowed Hitler to come to power which then led directly to renewal of the war in 1939 in Poland when the League of Nations failed to revise the treaty, which it had the specific authority to do.”

The same players were involved on the European front, and the reasons for the war stemmed mostly from post-WWI treaty abuse against Germany. After losing 117,000 troops in a completely unnecessary war(WWI), the U.S. population was sick to death of European affairs. Much was written after WWI by thinkers such as Harry Elmer Barnes, Albert Jay Nock and H.L. Mencken criticizing Woodrow Wilson’s decision to get us into the war after running his campaign on a peace platform. They further exposed Wilson’s agenda of trying to use the war to create his long sought-after League of Nations and spread “progressivism” to the world.

This was the social milieu to which F.D.R. was trying to attach his war in the late 30′s. It smacked too much of Wilsonian bumbling for the American public to accept. They saw nothing good coming from involvement in another European war. It wasn’t isolationism that drove such overwhelming opposition to entering WWII, it was pragmatism. It would be as if Reagan had tried to invade Vietnam upon taking office. When such painful war memories are still only 2 decades removed, you can hardly blame a wise fellow for wanting to stand this one out.

The other facet of analyzing Dr. Moore’s comments are to research whether or not it was non-interventionism itself that proved ineffectual at maintaining peace. I’ve gone over this before, but it bears constant repeating. We now know that F.D.R. goaded the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbour. The oil embargo against Japan. His moving of almost the entire western fleet to Hawaii in the weeks before the attack. His clearing of the shipping lanes that would be used by the Japanese as a corridor to Hawaii. The fact that it’s now known that U.S. intelligence had cracked the Japanese communications code weeks before the communique from Tokyo to the Japanese embassy in Washington declaring the attack was coming. And on, and on. If the government of a non-interventionist minded populace takes it upon itself to secretly maneuver their country into a war, it can hardly be the fault of that policy.

Dr. Moore remarks that “the ‘America First’ committees and some of the most influential figures in the United States Congress argued that Hitler’s war was none of our concern. We should tend to ourselves, and we could deal with whomever won in Europe and the Pacific when all the dust had settled.” Again, he is interpreting historical events in the light of later knowledge. It’s hard to look back now and imagine allowing Hitler to continue with his war crimes against the Jews. But, at the time, none of that was known. The U.S. didn’t enter the European front to stop Hitlerian genocide. They entered the war to help England maintain their superpower status in Europe against a rising Germany and Russia. At the time, a policy of staying out of the conflict and “deal[ing] with whomever won” was an absolutely correct policy. It was widely held at the time that a new war between Russia and Germany would result in the two countries grinding it out for years until they both had, had enough and came to the table. Interference would only extend the war to other parts of Europe and result in needless loss of life.

If America had stayed out of WWII, I don’t know that any different outcome would have come. By the time our troops crossed the Rhine, most of the remaining Jews in concentration camps had been executed or death marched. Yes, we ended up saving some, but we will never know what other options may have opened up in a protracted war with Russia. We already know of a few famous cases of underground Jewish escape routes being managed by such figures as Schindler and Irena Sendler. With a smaller war footprint on the European map and without the urgency which the Germans felt in the last days leading up to the invasion of Berlin, perhaps a more extensive escape network would have formed and fewer Jews would have died. We will never know. But, we do know that it wasn’t America’s role to be a saviour in Europe. That’s an anachronism. And it isn’t clear that our involvement in WWII did anything other than get more people killed across the globe and at home.

I will continue to be a fan of Dr. Moore, and a huge fan of Touchstone, but I would recommend that Dr. Moore find a different historical analogy than Pearl Harbour in the future.

It’s obvious what’s going on. The old guard Republican establishment is terrified of the Tea Partiers and anybody that smacks of libertarianism. That’s why Dick Cheney and Mitch Mconnell came out in support of Rand Paul’s primary opponent, Trey Grayson. Mconnell even went so far as to privately mislead James Dobson about Rand Paul’s views on abortion. Dobson later came out and switched his vote from Grayson to Paul after he learned that he had been mislead. Obviously the GOP elitists hate Rand Paul with a passion. And then, out of nowhere comes this big hubbub about his criticisms of the Civil Rights Act, originating from the neo-con blogosphere.

The dirty little secret of historical fact that they leave out of every story is that the Civil Rights Act was soundly criticized by many people at the time it was being debated, especially libertarians. Their criticism had nothing to do with race. Instead, they were thoroughly disgusted with the amount of power that the legislation gave to the federal government. Even though most of the CRA was justified(specifically titles I and III were long overdue), there were real causes for concern in other parts of the bill when it came to civil liberties of blacks and whites.

Most criticism of the CRA was focused on Title II, which attempted to outlaw discrimination in businesses. I say “attempted” because, as we recently explored, laws can never properly fulfill their stated goals. No law can outlaw racial discrimination. It can ban certain behaviour under threat of punishment, but it can’t ban discrimination itself. That’s impossible. So, what title II did was force people to behave in ways that they weren’t comfortable with. This may have helped blacks get a better table in a restaurant, but I can guarantee you that the cook spit in their food. Why? Because the CRA didn’t change what he actually thought about race. It just told whites and blacks that they had to play ball or else they would be punished. That’s not a solution to racism. It’s a recipe for exacerbating racial hatred.

Title IV was also a focus of criticism by many. The fear was that it would lead to quotas and forced busing. Although the CRA’s proponents routinely denied this, it nevertheless happened:

One of the most “damaging” arguments by the bill’s opponents was that once passed, the bill would require forced busing to achieve certain racial quotas in schools. Proponents of the bill, such as Emanuel Celler and Jacob Javits, said that the bill would not authorize such measures. Leading sponsor Hubert Humphrey wrote two amendments specifically designed to outlaw busing. Humphrey said “if the bill were to compel it, it would be a violation [of the Constitution], because it would be handling the matter on the basis of race and we would be transporting children because of race.” While Javits said any government official who sought to use the bill for busing purposes “would be making a fool of himself,” two years later the Department of Health, Education and Welfare said that Southern school districts would be required to meet mathematical ratios of students by busing.

–Civil Rights Act of 1964, Wikipedia

This forced desegregation by forcibly transporting black children across town to white schools was a clear violation of black people’s civil liberties. It opened up black school children to being beaten by white kids and being shunned by white teachers who were being forced out of their comfort zone too fast. That’s the danger of omnipotent legislation. The natural flow of society is jolted. Racism is a mental scar that needs a lot of time to correct itself in the hearts of men. Rushing the process by threat of force might speed it up, but at the cost of large short-term harm to the very people it’s aimed at helping.

One of the persistent critics of forced school desegregation was black author Zora Neal Hurston – author of Their Eyes Were Watching God. Although she totally opposed segregation on moral grounds, she feared that such things as the court’s decision in Brown vs. Board of Education set a dangerous precedent of encroaching on civil liberties. Although she died in 1960, it’s clear that the portions of the CRA that expanded the size and power of the federal state would have troubled her greatly. Her famous letter to the Orlando Sentinel is a fantastic read. Please go read it before it goes down the collective memory hole.

On a personal note, I find racism abhorrent, as I’ve posted before. But, what I find equally abhorrent are demigod politicians and black robed dieties forcing society to conform to their image by threat of physical and financial harm. Racism itself is idiotic. It makes no financial sense to restrict trade because of the color of a man’s skin. As people come to realize this, racism naturally falls by the wayside as an artifact of history. A black man’s money is the same as a white’s. A black man’s labour is the same as a white’s. This fact alone would have driven racism out of our culture as people began to see, more and more that racism itself is foolishness. Opposition to title II and title IV of the CRA isn’t an endorsement of racism. It’s a principled opposition to a piece of far-reaching legislation motivated by an equally strong commitment to the preservation of personal liberty.

Sometimes a love of liberty and a love for people come down on different sides of an issue and it’s hard to make a decision between the two. If I saw a restaurant owner turn away a black man for being black I would probably go over and punch him in the nose. But, that doesn’t mean that I think title II of the CRA was appropriate. Personal liberty is too fragile and too easily discarded. It must be protected. Maybe I’m naive, but I think racism in the U.S. was destined to be eradicated by society itself, without the help of legislation; except such legislation that was necessary to correct racist laws that our government had already passed.

Even the most cursory reading of world history will make one fact crystal clear: war is expensive; very, very, very expensive. In fact, it’s the most expensive thing a country will ever do. Historically, most countries that engage in large scale war eventually bankrupt themselves in the process and are forced to stop. Take the war of 1812 as an example. The U.S. was forced to sell $69 million in public bonds to finance that war. It took almost 25 years to pay off that debt – just from one large scale war. It was this debt load issued through the Bank of the United States and all of the shenanigans that followed it that directly led to the panic of 1819, as I’ve discussed here before.

The Mexican-American war in 1846 again forced the issuing of $63 million of public bonds. That was roughly equivalent to the entire federal budget. They hadn’t even made a dent in it. And, of course, all of this public debt issuance led directly to another bubble/banking panic known as the Panic of 1857. By the time the War for Southern Independence rolled around in 1860, that debt was still hanging around.

It’s also a fact of history that Napoleon sold Thomas Jefferson the Louisiana territory (Louisiana Purchase) to fund his war with England. That should demonstrate the amount of cash needed to fight a large war. He was willing to sell us almost an entire fifth of the North American continent in order to get enough gold to fight the British. And, this isn’t atypical. It’s entirely normal. As I said, war is really, really, really expensive. The cost of sending thousands of men and machinery across the globe to fight a war is just enormous.

All of this leads to the real issue I want to address. How is it then, that the United States apparently can continue to wage war multiple times per decade in seemingly endless fashion and not have any trouble paying for it? One answer: inflation. Massive, massive inflation. That’s the only way that this type of thing is possible. Robert Higgs calls inflation “death fuel” for this very reason. The only way to make war affordable for a country is to inflate it’s currency through debt creation, which then gets monetized by the Fed. That debt then goes to fund military endeavors quickly, before the money has lost it’s buying power. In this way, we are funding war by lowering our purchasing power on a daily basis. At least the selling of war bonds is an up-front way of accounting for the costs of war. Funding it through inflation is more insidious, since nobody sees it happening. It makes killing seem “free.”

Think inflation isn’t driving war? Take these figures:

• The first gulf war cost about $61 billion.
• The Iraq war currently stands at $700 billion.
• Afghanistan is currently at around $200 billion.

I’d say that those numbers show some serious inflation happening. When your government can spend almost a trillion dollars on something and you don’t even notice it economically, you can bet that there are some major inflationary games going on. Just for perspective, by the time we conclude the Iraq and Afghanistan wars(if we ever do), we will have spent more on them than the entire balance of the Social Security Trust Fund(if there was one). That means that we spent more in 10 years than the balance of a program that has been accumulating money since F.D.R was president. That, my friends, is inflation. Also, known as death fuel.

Firstly, the most glaring problem is that it’s dubious, at best, to lower the unemployment rate by drafting the unemployed into military service. In 1939, there were 9.5 million unemployed workers in the U.S., reflecting an unemployment rate of roughly 17%. By contrast, there were 370,000 military employees at the time. But, by 1944, military employment had risen to roughly 11.5 million people; thus, virtually canceling out the unemployment problem. However, drafting able-bodied workers into anything will reduce the unemployment rate. You could draft them into painting interstates green, or draft 10 million workers into digging holes and then filling them back in. That doesn’t end a depression, it just shuffles people around from one place to another. And, remember what a draft is. It’s a legal mandate. You either submit, or go to prison. But, somehow, when it’s a war draft, people see it differently. All of the sudden it becomes an economic magic wand to eliminate bad economies. Hogwash.

Secondly, you mustn’t forget that when a State nationalizes industry for war-time goods production, it is by default robbing labour and capital from it’s citizens. In other words, that new garden hose that Mrs. Johnson desperately needs in order to water her garden is now unavailable. Instead, it’s been made into jeep tires for the war. That doesn’t make Mrs. Johnson’s life any better. It makes it worse. Her husband might have a job. But that’s small concession if she has to ration food just as much as she did before he had one. We saw this all throughout the war years with every product that included steel, copper, rubber, etc. Consumers needs were not being met because all of the capital goods were being forced into making war materials for the almighty State. Again, just because those confiscated goods were going to be used in war doesn’t make it ok. It’s the same as the State taking all of that rubber, steel and copper and building an enormous 2000 square foot head of F.D.R. in the middle of the Utah desert. There is no difference. When resources are stolen, then wasted, it doesn’t matter in what manner they are wasted. The fact remains.

Thirdly, WWII economic numbers such as GDP, GNP and CPI are generally ignored by any economist worth his salt. That’s because of the horrendous skewing of numbers that result from government price controls, rationing, labour drafting and currency manipulation. You simply can’t trust any of the figures put out by the government from ’41 to ’47. They reflect a phony economy being manipulated by government. David Henderson sums it up well:

The point is that it’s not prosperity to produce things that government quickly destroys. So, if we factor out this 38 percent[war-time GNP gain], we’re left with virtually no increase in real gross national product per capita between 1940 and the last fiscal year of the war.

It’s actually worse than that. Despite various policies of Franklin Roosevelt that extended the Great Depression, the economy was coming out of the Depression in the prewar years. The unemployment rate, which had reached 24.9 percent in 1933, the worst year of the Great Depression, had fallen to 17.2 percent in 1939, 14.6 percent in 1940, and, as mentioned, 9.9 percent in 1941. Relatively-free-market economies, as the U.S. economy was, even after eight years of FDR, tend to recover from recessions and depressions as businesses find valuable uses for previously unused resources. The odds are high, therefore, that the unemployment rate would have continued to fall, absent U.S. participation in World War II, possibly reaching as low as 6 or 7 percent by 1944. This means that GNP per person, properly measured to reflect consumers’ values, would have been well above its actual level in 1944. Whatever the value of U.S. participation in the war, for Americans’ standard of living, World War II was a bust.

–David R. Henderson, antiwar.com

Wars don’t help economies. They ruin them. I’ll talk about that in more detail next time.

Have you heard the saying, “if you’re not growing, you’re dying?” Well, that’s ultimately what offensive war is about. It’s about empire building. It always has been, and it always will be. We can’t kid ourselves and pretend that Iraq somehow was a defensive war. It wasn’t. It was an attempt by us to set up a puppet government in one of the major countries in that region. Afghanistan wasn’t defensive either. It was no more of a defensive war than the Japanese invasion of Manchuria was. And, of course, the Japanese had their version of 9/11 too, in the form of the Manchurian Incident. Empires always find a pretext(however small) for invading small countries. England did it, Japan did it, Russia did/does it, Austria-Hungary did it, and we(the U.S.) do it too.

How can I say that Afghanistan wasn’t a defensive war? Imagine that you are a kid that gets bullied every day at school for years. One day you work up your courage and decide that you aren’t going to take it any more. When the bully walks in the room and starts taunting you, you sock him square in the nose. The only problem is that he is five times bigger than you, so your punch makes his nose bleed, but it didn’t really hurt him that much. What does he do in response? He beats you black and blue, rips your shirt off, chokes you with it and then throws you in the mud. And later he claims it was self-defense because you hit him first.

What will the people say when they wake up and realize that all of these wars that they have financed through taxes and inflation for decades have been just the empire building whims of ego-maniacal presidents?

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A bill to legalize possession of small amounts of marijuana for medical purposes has been approved by an Alabama House committee.

The sponsor, Democratic Rep. Patricia Todd of Birmingham, acknowledges that with only five days remaining the bill has little chance of winning final passage this session.

The bill would allow a patient suffering serious pain because of cancer or other ailments to possess up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana. The patient would need permission from a doctor and could grow his or her own marijuana.

One committee member, Democratic Rep. Yusuf Salaam of Selma, expressed concern that allowing marijuana use for medical purposes might open the door to full scale legalization of the drug.

The bill now goes to the full House.

–AP via al.com

While this may instill fear of quickening societal decline in the hearts of Christians, when you sit back and think about it logically, it really doesn’t make any sense for drugs to be illegal in the first place. And, there is no solid biblical or ethical reason to criminalize drug use. Now, I don’t expect you to just take my previous statement on face value. So, I’m going to step through my argument and try and convince you.

Here’s my argument:

• Christians should support the repeal of all laws that criminalize the use, possession or cultivation of drugs, because the enforcement of those laws, and resultant negative externalities, cause more harm than the drugs themselves.

Here’s my disclaimer:

• I, personally, do not use/take any illegal drugs whatsoever. And, if any currently illegal drug was to be made legal, I still would not put it into my body. In short, I do not and will not use drugs, now or in the future.

Now, my argument for repealing all drug laws is based on what I think is a set of obvious, common-sense observations about the consequences of criminalizing human behaviours that don’t harm others. I’m going to go through these observations one by one using marijuana laws as my example, but please note that I believe this applies to all drug laws. Not just marijuana.

1.) Marijuana’s legal status is not the determining factor upon which people decide to smoke it or not. Think about it for a moment. If you don’t currently use marijuana, is it because it’s illegal? Of course not. The reason you don’t smoke pot is because you’ve made either a moral, or a health decision to abstain from it. Marijuana’s legality doesn’t play into that decision making process at all. There are plenty of things that are legal to ingest that you, in fact, do not ingest. Tobacco for instance. Tobacco is fully legal, yet only about 21% of the U.S. population smoke cigarettes. Furthermore, that 21% number represents a drop in smokers from almost 43% in 1964 to 21% in 2005. That’s a 50% drop in 40 years, with smoking still being fully legal the entire time.

So, what is the reason for this drop in tobacco smoking rates? The overwhelming factors are social stigma and health concerns. Legality has nothing to do with it. As a matter of fact, most people begin smoking early in life, before they are of legal age, only to quit later as adults. This fact shows how ineffectual bans on personal behaviour are. If a majority of people begin using a drug when it’s illegal and then quit when it’s legal, that blows the whole theory out of the water from the get go. The bottom line is that legality doesn’t influence usage among behaviours that have moral stigma attached. If a person doesn’t smoke weed now, it’s about 99% certain that he won’t smoke it when it’s legal.

2.) Drug laws put people in prison for engaging in a behaviour that doesn’t harm anyone. People should not go to jail for ingesting something into their body. I believe it’s immoral to lock someone in a cage for eating, smoking or ingesting something into their body that we don’t approve of. But, let me be clear. This is an entirely different argument from things like drunk driving or negligence. What I’m talking about is the simple act of picking a plant out of your back yard, sticking it in a cigarette paper and inhaling the smoke. Knocking down a person’s door, kidnapping them from their family and throwing them in prison for months or years at a time simply for doing that act is immoral.

3.) Drug criminalization creates violence and suffering. You know what’s worse than smoking dope? Children being killed in the crossfire of Mexican drug wars and innocent people being murdered to keep them quiet about drug trafficking in inner-city neighborhoods. If prohibition taught us anything, it’s that making the personal consumption of certain substances illegal instantly creates a black market. And, that black market spawns gangs, violence, murder and all sorts of horrible side effects. What finally brought down Al Capone’s gang? It wasn’t the FBI. It was the repeal of prohibition. Want to destroy Mexican drug cartels? Repeal all of the drug laws. When things are made illegal, people fight over them. When those things are legalized people engage in commerce. It’s been said that when goods can’t cross borders, bullets will.

4.) Being an addict is not the same as being a criminal. Drugs are addictive. That’s a fact. Putting someone in prison doesn’t make them any less addicted to heroine. In fact, it complicates their recovery from that addiction. There’s plenty of drugs in prison. There’s also plenty of rape and violence. And, in the mean time, the addict is now isolated from their family, church and other loved ones. It’s sick. Showing the love of Christ to an addict is only complicated and frustrated by locking them up in a cage. And treating them like a criminal, so that they have to hide from public view, creates in them a sense of criminality that leads to worse behaviour and possibly real crime. What’s better? Having a prison ministry to go and preach to drug offenders, or not having them be prisoners at all and witnessing to them on their own front lawn.

5.) Enforcement of drug laws consume tens of billions of tax dollars each year. The DEA(Drug Enforcement Agency) has a budget of $2.6 billion dollars. When you take into account all of the thousands of enforcement agents, local police, state troopers, marshalls, court employees, etc. that are required to enforce the U.S. drug laws, it’s just insane the amount of money that is wasted on this nonsense. There are now roughly 50,000 people in prison in this country on marijuana charges, at a cost of $1 billion per year to the tax payer. When drugs as a whole are taken into account, the numbers are far higher. Again, I believe it’s wrong to be in favor of the caging of my fellow citizens for simply smoking a plant. If they get behind the wheel of a car or neglect their children in favor of drugs, let’s intervene as a society, but anything less is just bullying.

6.) Drug laws are completely inconsistent. This is an easy one. Marijuana is illegal. Alcohol isn’t. There is no difference between the two. Case closed.

7.) Sin is not the same as crime. There are lots of things that are sinful, that aren’t criminal. For instance, coveting your neighbors possessions is sinful. But it’s absolutely not criminal. The same applies to drugs and alcohol. Scripture tells us that our bodies are the “temple of the Lord.” Therefore, we should take care of our bodies and not damage them carelessly. But, using that as the basis of a civil law is silliness. Where does it stop? Sure, some people drink too much and some people smoke weed, and that impairs their judgement. But, many people also willingly push their bodies to the physical limit and get drowsy behind the wheel from overwork. Should we imprison them too? Also, many people willingly don’t eat right, so that their bodies get sick and they can’t take care of their families like they should. Should we imprison them too? Of course not. Smoking marijuana may be sinful, but it isn’t criminal any more than becoming addicted to Ambien is criminal. Both impair your judgement, but you only go to jail for one.

8.) Drug laws increase State power at the expense of social power. Christians should be the first in line to come to the aid of those in the grip of drug addiction. But, we have acquiesced to the impersonal, faceless, cold State. They might get somewhat better after the State puts them through mandatory drug rehab programs, but where is the love of Christ? Drugs have always carried social stigma. And, even before there were marijuana laws(The Marijuana Tax Act of 1937) those addicted to drugs were social outcasts. Christ told us to minister to those people, not throw them in a cage. That effort is hindered, not helped, by zealous District Attorneys that just need another notch on their belt in an election year.

9.) Drug laws just simply don’t work. I heard it said recently that the drug wars are over and the drugs won. That’s a very true statement. It’s estimated that roughly 100 million Americans have smoked pot at some point in their lives or actively smoke it now. Statistically, this is an absolutely dismal failure. While this isn’t an argument in and of itself, it lends us an insight into the feasability of outlawing non-harmful behaviour. In short, banning a behaviour doesn’t stop that behaviour. It just empowers the State. The only thing that keeps people from doing drugs is shame and lack of funds. Not laws.

And finally:

Legalization of marijuana is inevitable. It’s going to happen folks. It’s just a matter of time. California could legalize marijuana as early as this year. And, if that happens and they successfully tax the crap out of it, you will see a rapid domino effect across all of the other states as they join in the action to save their dwindling budgets. What you won’t see is millions of non-pot smokers going to the pot store to buy some weed for the first time when it’s finally legalized. That’s just not the way things work. As a Christian, I want people to refrain from behaviour that could harm themselves. But, so much more harm comes from drug law enforcement than from the actual drugs themselves that I believe it’s the appropriate Christians stance to support repeal of drug laws. At the very least, it would put us back to the pre-1937 stance of curbing drug use simply through societal shame and addiction treatment, not laws.

I’m going to take a page from Jack Spirko here and list the three things that worry us most in life: putting food on the table, keeping a roof over our heads, and clothing ourselves. Food, shelter, clothing. Those are the three staples that, if taken care of ahead of time, will help us to have a comfortable “retirement.” In order to do that, we need to focus on these things:

1. Paying off our homes and turning our homes into producers.
2. Increasing our food production and designing our life to be more simple.
3. Storing up money in an inflation resistant way.
4. Expanding our knowledge/skills to be less dependent on external systems.

The first thing we need to do is focus on getting out of debt and paying off our homes as quickly as possible. The myth that your home will forever increase in value has been exposed. It’s a lie. In reality, it takes constant in-flows of money to keep our homes in good shape, and the market can destroy your home’s value as easily as it increased it. We need to jettison that huge albatross of a mortgage from around our necks. Once you get rid of that $1200 per month mortgage, you have eliminated item of worry number one: shelter. And you’ve given yourself a $14,000 per year raise to boot. Yay!

Next, we need to focus on ramping up our own food production and learn to live more simply. Think about it: if you invest $75 in a bundle of 5 pear trees that will, in turn, produce a harvest of pears every year for decades afterwards, that’s a huge return on your investment. And if you take the time to learn the art of grafting/cloning, you can replicate new pear trees yourself and have a perpetual supply of pears for the rest of your life. Investing $500 in apple, pear, peach, plum, cherry, lemon trees will produce thousands of dollars worth of savings for the rest of your life, and probably on into your children’s lives as well.

The same is true for gardening in general. If you can begin to produce 10-20% of your own food supply, you’ve turned your home into a producer instead of being a constant money pit. You can spend $2 on a packet of heirloom tomato seeds and be able to save enough seeds each year that you will never have to buy tomatos again. These are real investments that pay back huge returns. Instead of dropping $50 into a mutual fund, spend that $50 on the necessary equipment to get started canning and preserving your harvest. Learning these things aren’t just quaint throwbacks to the past. They are real ways to live your life that save money and reduce your dependence on others. Next time you need some yeast, don’t just run down to the store and buy instant yeast. Try your hand at growing your own. It’s these little things that preserve the knowledge of the past that will give you the most freedom.

We, of course, also need to save money. But, if we just shove cash under the mattress it’s not going to do us much good. Those dollars will be losing value at a 3-4% clip every year due to inflation. In that case, we should put our money in the form of things that hedge against inflation. Silver is a fantastic inflation hedge. Let’s use another Jack Spirko example. In 1970 the average cost of a new car was $4000. At $1.64 per ounce(silver price in 1970), that’s 2,439 ounces of silver to buy a new car. Well, today, silver is currently running at about $16 per ounce, but let’s make it $12 per ounce to be really conservative since that’s what it was trading at back at the first of the year. That means that the same 2,439 ounces of silver it took to buy a new car in 1970 is worth $29,268 today. That would still buy you a really nice brand new car. That’s what it means to be a hedge against inflation. The same amount then buys the same amount now.

Jack recommends roughly 10-15% of your long-term savings in gold/silver. I’d say that’s a little low. I’d personally feel better in the 20-25% range, but that’s a personal decision that each person has to make for themselves. The point is, it’s a bad idea to dump all of your money into one thing. Even if it’s something stable like silver. There are other inflation hedges such as commodity indexes and such that are worth investing in. Even local businesses that you believe in. Just do some research and be creative. I showed in the last post how volatile the stock market is. It’s not the panacea it’s been made out to be.

You may think that what I’ve just outlined is strange, but this is the way our great-grandfather’s generation lived. They lived simpler lives and depended on the land more. Everyone loves to wax nostalgic for the simpler times of their grandparents, but nobody seems to want to actually live that way. But, I really think that in the future we won’t have any choice but to go back to that way of living. The good times of the boom cycle are over, and if we don’t want to work ourselves all the way to age 90 in the same ol’ high stress rat race, we’ll have to take these types of steps to do it.

*I mentioned Jack Spirko a couple of times in this post. Many of these ideas are directly influenced by him. Check out his podcast at The Survival Podcast.