OK, so everybody except Ron Paul is supposed to held responsible for the content of the newsletters with Ron Paul’s name on them?
May I suggest (as a poster, not a moderator) that the issue of whether the war on drugs is racist or not be moved to a new thread? It’s an interesting subject, and it would be better served if it weren’t hidden on page 15 of an unrelated thread.
Edit: I’d be fine with this being moved to a new thread.
I’m not defending it. Not any more than people who were opposed to Bush II during his presidency were defending him if they said he wasn’t about to invade Iran. I oppose the drug war and just said: "It’s quite possible to oppose the war on drugs for the facts; it doens’t work, it creates a massive criminal class, it removes the recourse to law and guarantees that the rule of force will be the most effective way to control the flow of profit, it criminalizes personal choices made by consenting adults, drug use is a crime with no victim, and so on. "
I just think it’s not only inaccurate to call it racist, but self-defeating. You’re not going to convince people that the concept of aggressively interdiction and penalization of drug crimes is wrong because it’s “racist” and that, therefore, people who support it are essentially racists. “Support my politics or you’re either a racist or a racist-enabler” just isn’t an effective message.
Being unable to hop over to the Universe Next Door I really can’t say. My guess is that as long as the media sensationalized it, it’d be illegal in just the same way it is now.
Yes, but individual police departments/courts/whatever can be investigated for ethics violations and such. But the claim isn’t that specific groups charged with prosecuting the WoD must be reined in and/or taken to task for shitty behavior, but that the WoD as a whole is racist. Your example of dealing with one specific company for one specific company’s actions rather than calling the entire institution of job hunting racist… demonstrates the flaw in tom’s argument, not the sense behind it.
But that’s the natural conclusion to the argument. If the WoD is racist, and if we want to end racism in this country, then in order to end racism in this country we will, sooner or later, have to end the WoD. And, similarly, those who don’t want to end the WoD are supporting the continuation of racism.
Somehow I have difficulty believing that newsletters from an obscure Congressman had a “wide distribution”. We’re not talking Newsweek here.
Are you even remotely serious? When a politician advocates sleazy/reprehensible positions, pointing that out is equivalent to espousing the same positions?
Apparently we must never reveal what political or religious extremists are saying in order to counteract them. :rolleyes:
“Ron Paul: he feeds on your refutations. Also, souls. Vote for Ron!”
They could just as easily make the penalties for powder cocaine harsher without appearing soft on drug crime and the very fact that crack is perceived as a “demon drug” is a demonstration of racist thought, as the belief comes from portrayals of black people going instantly mad when using it.
Drug policy is not the whole of the war of drugs. Rational people know that drug policy is mostly idiotic, but while I would not claim that the war on drugs is inherently and completely racist, denying that it has a racist component is simply denying reality.
I’d just as soon limit the craziness to as few threads as I have to watch.
He has to, he doesn’t feed on much else.
I can’t agree. We’d see claims like “he’s hard on drugs except when he’s soft on drugs. Flip flopper, flip flopper!”
Nor is the fact that crack is demonized a racist thought pattern by necessity. The media, to my knowledge, never presented as a fact that blacks who use crack go instantly insane but white people can have a dandy time on it.
It has no racist component. It is implemented by some people who are racist. But that’s a different matter.
Actually, it appears to be implemented in racist ways by many people who are probably not consciously racist, at all.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer, in October, 2008, reported on a program for handling first time drug offenders–a program administered by lawyers and judges, many of whom are prominent civil rights advocates, including several blacks–that routinely dealt more harshly with black offenders than white offenders, based on (apparently) unconscious decisions regarding how the various people charged would respond to the system. Similar cases have been made regarding decisions to target differing ethnic neighborhoods with either federal (more harsh) or state (less harsh) statutes. Claiming that it is merely rogue racists in the system that causes these discrepancies is not supported by the facts.
Even if you have a lot of people behaving badly, it’s still an issue of the implementation of a program and not the program itself. Even if the people behaving in a racist manner are direction that racist behavior at their own racial group. Subconscious racism is still racism.
Let’s say that Hypotheticatopia had a shall-issue policy for concealed carry, but Clerky McClerk, a black man, just never liked the look in the eyes of any black men who came to him, so he found reasons to disqualify them. Does that mean that concealed carry is a racist policy?
Glad you agree.
I’ve never denied that some people involved in the implementation of the policies were racist. I’ve pointed out that that doesn’t mean that the policies themselves (which we know as the “war on drugs”) are racist.
I see where our misunderstanding lies. You limit the “war on drugs” to the laws that have been enacted.
I would say that the “war on drugs” encompasses all the laws, all the departmental policies and procedures, all the propaganda, and all the actions taken in support of the preceding.
But as I pointed out earlier, things like unequal sentencing for minorities isn’t limited to drug offenses. Is the “war on crime” also racist, since blacks tend to draw higher sentences for violent crimes with similar circumstances?
It’s certainly racist in execution if not intention, among its other flaws.
You’re just talking about the newsletters because you support the racist war on drugs. Ron Paul votes and speaks against the racist war on drugs.
Unfortunately, his position on the racist war on black people seems a little less clear cut.
But not both at the same time, unfortunately. 
I’ve already said that the war on drugs is a bad policy, please try to say things that are correct and not simple attacks on anybody who doesn’t support Ron in the same manner you do.
But good attempt to distract from Ron Paul’s own endorsement and use of vile racism to raise money for his campaigning. Obviously, the only reason someone would bring that up is that they hate black people.