End the War on Freedom

"I have nothing to fear from the Stalwart Patriots of California. They all love me for what I have done for them while occupying the Octagon Office. But other countries are jealous of us; they envy our Rich and Free and Democratic lifestyle and sometimes their smoldering hatred erupts in violence." -- the Californian president in Heinlein's Friday after surviving an assassination attempt

Jeff Quinn at GunBlast - The Heavy-Barreled AR-15 Varmint / Target Rifle - Mr. Quinn tested five HBAR .223 semi-autos: Doublestar, Bushmaster Varminter, Rock River Varmint, ArmaLite M-15A4(T), and DPMS Panther. He liked them all. For some reason, he didn't try any of Colt's HBAR rifles. I haven't shot any varmints with it, but I sure like putting holes in targets with my Match Target HBAR. [gunblast]

Shooting with each of these fine firearms was a pleasure. The AR-15 rifle system has proven itself in recent years to be an excellent platform for a varmint and target rifle. With practice and a good scope sight, accurate hits at several hundred yards are easy. The recoil is light, and the ergonomics of the AR system is almost perfect. The heavy barrels on these guns are free-floated for consistent accuracy. The flat top receivers are perfect for mounting a precision scope. I like to keep a heavy and a light AR around, but if I had to choose only one, I would keep a heavy. They are easier to shoot well at long range, have less muzzle blast, and greater velocity than a short barrel. For a fast shooting varmint gun, they can't be beat. For a police sniper rifle, the heavy AR is almost perfect. Where legal, they make a good deer rifle with the proper ammo in skilled hands. Follow-up shots on a running coyote are easier with a heavy AR than any other type of rifle.

Jacob Sullum - Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use - Just say "Yes!" to drugs. Hehe. If you donate $35 or more to DRCNet, they will send you a copy. DRCNet's review by Phil Smith is here. From Amazon's review: [drcnet]

Jacob Sullum goes beyond debate on legalization or the proper way to win the "war on drugs," to the heart of a social and individual defense of using drugs.

Saying Yes argues that the all-or-nothing thinking that has long dominated discussions of illegal drug use should give way to a wiser, subtler approach. Exemplified by the tradition of moderate drinking, such an approach rejects the idea that there is something inherently wrong with using chemicals to alter one's mood or mind. Saying Yes further contends that the conventional understanding of addiction, portraying it as a kind of chemical slavery in which the user's values and wishes do not matter, is also fundamentally misleading.

Writing in a lively and provocative style that earned him critical acclaim for his previous book, Sullum contrasts drug use as it is described by politicians and propagandists with drug use as it is experienced by the silent majority of users. The lives they lead challenge a central premise of the war on drugs: the idea that certain substances have the power to compel immoral behavior.

But, as Sullum shows in several entertaining chapters, voodoo pharmacology -- the basis of our current prohibitionist drug policies -- has little to do with the reality of drug use patterns and more to do with enduring cultural fears encapsulated above by the paranoid Mr. Forbes. In passage after passage that will be uplifting to those drug users who never lost their jobs, their families, their health or their minds because they smoke pot today or snorted coke in the '80s or tripped on acid in the '60s or rolled on Ecstasy in the '90s, Sullum explores not only the unharmful but sometimes downright positive effects of drug use for many drug users.

And he finds that just as the wino drunk in the gutter does not represent most alcohol drinkers, neither does the thieving junky represent all heroin users, the twitching tweaker all amphetamine users, nor Cheech and Chong all pot smokers. Quite the opposite. "The silent majority of users," he writes, are "decent, respectable people who, despite their politically incorrect choice of intoxicants, earn a living and meet their responsibilities."

Sullum shouldn't have to tell us that. But in the face of decades of relentless demonization of drugs and drug users, it bears repeating. And repeating. And repeating. This is why campaigns to improve the image of drug users, like Mikki Norris's Pot Pride (http://www.cannabisconsumers.org) are necessary. It is pathetic that such a thing is necessary, but it is, and Sullum helps explain why.

...

Doubtless many who read or hear about Sullum's book will assume he is uninformed or insensitive to the harm caused by people with real drug problems to themselves or others, because he chose to focus on responsible users. But that's not the case, and it's not Sullum's fault if they feel that way; it's an inevitable reaction from a society conditioned by a century of anti-drug demagoguery by governments and zealots reluctant to admit responsible drug use even exists, much less constitutes the norm, a conditioning Sullum hopes his book will help defuse. Sullum is a libertarian, and hence believes that people who engage in potentially risky behaviors bear responsibility for any harms they suffer as a result, and that those drug users who commit crimes against persons or property should be punished for those crimes, not for their drug use, and certainly not excused from responsibility because of it. It all seems so reasonable.

And it is. Sullum fittingly cites the great philosopher Frank Zappa, who once noted that, "A drug is neither moral nor immoral -- it's a chemical compound. The compound itself is not a menace to society until a human being treats its consumption as a license to act like an asshole." Now, if only drug users can somehow convince the government to not treat our consumption of some drug as a license to act like an asshole toward us.

Wally Conger at Strike the Root - Discovering Equilibrium - Mr. Conger likes this "derivative of any number of dystopian classics". [smith2004]

Writer-director Kurt Wimmer's Equilibrium takes place in the not-too-distant future and shortly after World War III. The nation-state Libria determines that wars result not from governments but from emotionally and sensually charged citizens. So they outlaw all music, literature, and art. And they begin doping the populace into "equilibrium" with twice-daily shots of Prozium, an emotion-dampening drug that turns folks into passionless flatworms. The enforcers of this policy are called Clerics. They blowtorch books and paintings and ferret out and kill all "sense offenders" who just say no to their meds. And it's a highly ranked Cleric named John Preston (Christian Bale) who serves as this movie's Winston Smith, its Montag, its awakening conscience. Preston accidentally knocks his morning ampule of Prozium onto the bathroom floor, shattering it, so he misses a dose. He discovers what real emotional equilibrium is all about. Within a few days, inspired by an alluring sense offender named Mary (Watson), Preston is the Resistance's prime instrument of national liberation. And what better instrument than a state-trained Gun-Kata master?

Add comment Edit post Add post