Let’s just outlaw feeling pleasure

Let’s just outlaw feeling pleasure

(My Clovis News Journal column for November 15, 2013.  But most of the activity is on the Portales News-Tribune site this time.)

I think I have come up with the winning strategy in the War on Politically Incorrect Drugs.

The problem is, each time a new substance is criminalized, independent innovators come up with something new which isn't yet illegal. Marijuana is illegal most places, therefore "synthetic marijuana" (which is actually dangerous, unlike the innocuous plant whose effect it mimics) was invented. The synthetic marijuana is then outlawed by "do somethingers", so a new substance will be created. It's an unending battle of unintended consequences.

And each new volley fired at society by either side hurts more people than the original problem ever did.

As opposed as I am to the War on Politically Incorrect Drugs, I see the only solution is to cut to the root and address the reason humans desire to use drugs.

The substances themselves are not the most critical piece of the puzzle. The drugs are just a means to an end; just the delivery system. You've got to address the feelings they produce. The goal is the feeling of pleasure- or at least a temporary reduction in misery- people get from using the substances.

The Prohibitionists need to stop focusing on the delivery system and focus on the feeling. They must write a "law" forbidding anyone from feeling any pleasure- that way all drugs, including tobacco and alcohol, would be outlawed. Just what the Prohibitionists have always craved.

One problem this would create for the State is the loss of income from the pleasures that are currently legal and "taxed".

It's not only chemical substances that cause the scourge of pleasure. Activities and hobbies do too. People get pleasure from football, religion, hobbies, cars, food, friends, romance, and more. Will those be exempt? Wouldn't that be a dangerous precedent which could create pleasure loopholes?

I suppose that can be dealt with when it becomes too much of a problem and distracts people from their primary purposes of producing "tax revenues" and being enthusiastic cannon fodder for The State.

Another problem would be finding a way to manufacture the exceptions the anti-pleasure advocates would demand for their own pleasures. After all, "my pleasures are acceptable; yours are shameful and wrong". Or, at least that seems to be what the anti-pleasure nannies have been saying with their advocacy. Obviously, the thrills the anti-pleasure nannies get from criminalizing other people's joy can't ever be subject to limits. That would never fly. It would expose the hypocrisy of the whole prohibition movement to even acknowledge that pleasure exists. I never said my solution would be perfect.
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Blind hate fueled by ignorance, and more than a little stupidity

Anti-liberty bigots are just insane.  There's no other explanation for things like this: link

I posted the following comment:

How sad that you blame objects and not acts. I suppose in your mind it is better to be murdered by a thug using a fist, a knife, or a rock than by a thug with a gun.
No tool in the history of the world has made it more possible for a smaller, weaker victim to fight back against a stronger, determined aggressor with less chance of being harmed in their resistance. It’s not a magic talisman- you still need to know what you are doing. But this stupid and, quite honestly, evil objection you express toward gun safety training would be like you demanding that kids not be taught to swim or even touch water, and then acting surprised when kids drown needlessly.

Feel free to join in.  David Codrea's "The War on Guns" pointed me to the post.

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"Gifted with such advantages..."

I'm currently reading "The Count of Monte Cristo" and really enjoying it.  I decided to read it after my most recent viewing of "V for Vendetta" (on November 5th, of course).

I was quite amused by one little bit, which isn't pivotal to the story, but that I enjoyed for obvious reasons.  Edmond Dantes goes to a barber to get "cleaned up" after his escape from the dungeon:

"At this period it was not the fashion to wear so large a beard and hair so long; now a barber would only be surprised if a man gifted with such advantages should consent voluntarily to deprive himself of them."

"Gifted with such advantages..."  I like the sound of that, although I'm not sure that has been my experience so far.  Maybe I need the beard, too, in order to get the advantages, but my whiskers are sparse and pathetic due to my genes.  I can grow the hair, though (if the new cat doesn't keep chewing it off while I sleep).

Mostly I like my long hair because it just feels better to me, but I also like that it is so different from the short hair of so many State enthusiasts and enforcers, especially those with the silly little scalp rug so in fashion among the cops and military.

I just enjoy seeing the "olde tyme" references to long hair.

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