(My Eastern New Mexico News column for March 7, 2018)
How much is enough?
When it turns out stronger anti-drug "laws" don't prevent addiction or tragedies, how much are you willing to expand prohibition? How far are you willing to have armed government employees go-- on your behalf-- to impose your opinions? Would you approve of permanent checkpoints on all roads? Do you favor banning the manufacture of any and all chemicals which could possibly be combined to make substances you are willing to kill people over?
Are you willing to make dying of cancer even more agonizing than it already is, just to make it harder for people to abuse painkillers? What about chronic pain which isn't fatal? Is it just too bad, but worth making people suffer to push your anti-drug agenda? You might as well encourage people to become rattle-shaking witch doctors, chanting over the sick and injured, hoping it helps.
When your current wish list of anti-gun "laws" fails to make Americans safe, what next? Do you demand the government suppress any knowledge or technology which could allow people to invent or build their own guns? Do you send armed government employees door to door searching for guns or gun-making supplies and information, killing all who resist? Welcome to the new stone age, where murder still occurs.
What do you propose when "securing the border" doesn't magically "make America great again"? When crime still runs rampant in the same crime-ridden, socialist cities. When the economy doesn't heal just because you prevent someone from taking a job you don't want, for pay you wouldn't accept? When it turns out border walls and a 100-mile wide "Constitution-Free Zone" all around the edges of America don't make you more prosperous, happy, or safe, what next?
What will you propose when each of your endorsed attacks on liberty only creates more of what you claim to not want? Because this is what will happen if you get your way.
What do you hate or fear so badly that you are willing to destroy society in order to stomp it out? Have you taken into account all the unintended consequences your enforcement fetish will unleash? If not, you aren't being responsible.
It's time to consider just where are you willing to draw the line between tyranny and liberty. How much tyranny will it take to satisfy you?
I already know where my line is. For me, any tyranny is too much. I wish I saw some limit on the amount others are willing to endorse.
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