From: larry@cs.com (Larry Spence)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,alt.rush-limbaugh
Subject: Re: What is a Conservative?
Date: 17 Nov 92 23:11:33 GMT
Organization: Computer Support Corporation,  Dallas,Texas

In article <gf23l3G00WAxM33GN=@andrew.cmu.edu> ts2a+@andrew.cmu.edu (Thomas Omar Smith) writes:
>Excerpts from netnews.alt.fan.rush-limbaugh: 15-Nov-92 Re: What is a
>Conservative? Howard Black@ux1.cts.eiu (1496)
>
>> In article <1992Nov13.212811.5278@anasazi.com> best@anasazi.com (Mike
>> Best) writes:
>
>> >Drugs?  I've been there and I don't agree with you.
>
>>     Fine.  You don't agree.  However, this is irrelevant, since an
>> individual's use of drugs is their business, and to encroach on that
>> freedom is anti-conservative.  I have never understood the fervor with
>> which conservatives pursue the fictitious War on Drugs (tm), when I thought
>> that they stood for less government intrusion into people's lives.
>
>You're confusing conservative with libertarian.  An individual has
>certain responsibilities to society under conservatism.  The use of
>drugs impairs their ability keep those obligations and therefore places
>a burden on society.

As anecdotal evidence, I have met _many_ people who have occasionally
used recreational drugs who are of, if anything, above-average productivity.
The stereotype of drug users as slothful and unable to provide for them-
selves is a holdover from the days when blacks and Hispanics were stereo-
typed as shiftless and lazy and likely to rape and kill under the influ-
ence of illegal drugs (and people persist in seeing the Typical Drug User
as a criminal minority person, despite statistics that show that most drug
users are white and reasonably well-off).

>Therefore, the war on drugs is perfectly in line with conservatism.

Would you please list the "responsibilities to society" that people would
have under an ideal conservative government?  Would it be permissible for
a citizen to, say, live in a cabin in the wilderness, contributing little
to the GDP but requiring little in terms of government services (assume 
this person is painting or writing a book, for example)?  If said person 
was not causing any burden on the system by using recreational drugs (which
he/she presumably grew him/herself), what is conservatism's reason for 
intruding on that person's lifestyle?  Are we all to be conscripted into
a Perot-style "economic war" against the evil Japanese and Germans?  If
conservatives believe that a free, unregulated market is the most efficient
way to run the economy, who are they to force people to be more productive?
Won't the natural forces of greed, er, uh, competition, cause people to
eschew drugs due to their damaging effects on productivity?

If you're going to legislate against things that (are alleged to) diminish
productivity, why not laws against masturbation (lost work time), alcohol
(proven productivity losses and health problems), watching TV (more lost 
time), etc.?  Isn't the _real_ agenda behind the WoD a moral crusade rather
than anything based in logic?  If not, why don't conservatives go after
Phillip Morris, Miller Brewing, etc., first, since vast numbers of deaths
are provably attributable to these corporations' products?  Last I heard,
death caused a severe inability to meet one's "responsibilities to society."

-- 
Larry Spence
larry@cs.com
uunet!csccat!larry 
Newsgroups: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh