Monday, February 7, 2011

Perfectly Incoherent

The story calls it a "Freudian slip." Well, I'm not so sure about that. Is it Freudian to simply state the crazy idea you've got in you mind? Here's what happened. In an interview with a Mexican newspaper, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was quoted as saying that the US cannot legalize drugs as a means of fighting the black market (and all the killing that goes with it--it's estimated that the drug war in Mexico has killed 34,000 people, including more than a thousand kids) because "there is just too much money in it." She continued: ""You can legalize small amounts for possession, but those who are making so much money selling, they have to be stopped. They can’t be given an even easier road to take, because they will then find it in their interest to addict even more young people."

The legalization advocates immediately objected. It is pretty obvious from this statement that Clinton doesn't have a clue about what she's talking about. The reason there's so much money in selling drugs is because they are illegal. This is obvious to anybody who's had a week of Eco 101.

At the Drug War Chronicle, Scott Morgan called Clinton's argument "perfectly incoherent" and argued it flew in the face of economic theory.
I can't help but wonder what everyone on the left would say if this preposterous analysis came from Sarah Palin, rather than Hillary Clinton. It's the sort of profound nonsense that ought to get you skewered by Jon Stewart, yet our Secretary of State will almost certainly get a free pass on misunderstanding literally everything about the escalating violence below our border.

3 comments:

Montag said...

If hemp were legalized, most of the profit would come from government subsidies to marijuana farmers.

This is a desperate answer. It is desperate because every possible approach available to her has been used, and she knows nothing...nothing else! She has totally used up her fund of ideas, and when a "war" doesn't work, obviously nothing works...
Why don't they just Waco-ize drugs?! Bill did that back in the 90's.

Unknown said...

Drugs have been pretty well Waco-ized now, don't you think? I mean have you seen the way these so-called "police" forces involved in the drug war are accoutered? They look like battle squads in Afghanistan. We're a militarized society, my friend, and the war on drugs serves that purpose admirably.

Montag said...

In Waco-ization, everything but everything gets burned!
Most of the drugs escape the photo-op charade bonfires the DEA puts on for the press.