I'm sorry, but your numbers are wrong. You don't have 1/population power. You have absolutely zero power to tell anyone else what they must or must not eat. You have 0/the population of the earth power over what other people eat.

If every other person on earth voted for what I was going to eat tonight it would be no more legitimate than if I ordered everyone else on earth to eat liver and onions tonight. Your choice of restaurant analogy is flawed at best. We're all already at the same restaurant. And we're all paying the check separately. You don't tell me what to eat or how much I can spend. Neither you, nor the combined population of the earth have any say in what I eat, how much I eat, when I eat, where I eat, etc.

I think its the times man, everyone who isn't up GWs repugnant ass is starting to understand what Radar has been saying all along. 2 outs bottom of the ninth for Lady Liberty, she needs to put up some runs in a hurry.

You haven't addressed what I said at all, Radar. What am I to make of this? Either you purposely misconstrued it for the sake of argument (which is sad) or you haven't understood it (even sadder).

Actually I did address it. In fact I addressed it directly. I showed that you have no point, and you have absolutely no say in where other people eat, what they eat, when they eat, how much they pay, etc. You claimed to have 1/population power, but in fact you have 0/population power. You have absolutely nothing to say in the matter, and you therefore can't grant this power to government. Nor can anyone else on earth. The combined population of the planet earth minus you has no say in what you eat, what drugs you take, etc.

So you've either purposely lied about my not addressing your problem...sad. Or you've totally ignored it....sadder. Or you're too dim to understand it....pathetic.

No. You didn't. Are you telling me you've never gone along with a group of people who all wanted to eat at a particular place when you were not so thrilled about the place?

Person who copies the pathetic - saddest.

"I'm tru wit dis guy"

But dar, that person has the choice not to go out with his friends after all. He does not have to eat where everyone else is eating. It is certainly prudent to do so, but it is still his choice.

Actually I addressed it when I said his analogy was EXTREMELY flawed in the first place. We're all already at the same restaurant (America). We're all paying our checks separately. We all own the restaurant, but not each other. Nobody can tell the others what to order on the menu, how much they can buy, when they can eat, etc.. Nobody can tell the restaurant what foods to have on the menu because it has everything on the menu and the restaurant never closes.

You can not dispute the absolute FACT that we own ourselves (which means nobody else on earth has any claim on us and therefore can't tell us what to eat, or do with our bodies) and that the limited powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed. Since government get's its limited powers from the people, and none of the people has a right to tell the others what they must eat, what medical procedures they may have, what drugs they may take, etc., none of them can grant this power to government.

You can disagree all you like, but it's like disagreeing with gravity. Feel free to tell me gravity does not exist and even step off a cliff, but don't complain to me when you turn into a bloody stain on the ground.

Certainly. Notice that I did mention secession above. Whether as the southern states attempted to do during the civil war or the individual sort when Vietnam dissenters moved to Canada.

Radar has stated in many colorful ways that groups/governments whatever have no power that individuals don't have. I have yet to see any supportive reasoning.

I gave one counter example. But I can think of more. I bet others can too. Think about the power of unions. They hold a power in the aggregate that an individual worker doesn't have. I'm sure there are more, but noone will ever dissuade Radar. The issue is a fundamental one to libertarianism and I don't think radar can bear to see it questioned.

Nope. Unlike most of the people (typically the NORML crowd) I know the really bad down side of what fun drugs can do to you.

Yes, but everyone knows the bad side of tobacco, gambling, and alcohol, and still we allow it.

I just think that criminalization and incarceration is not working. I'm not suggesting crystal meth be sold at Wal-Mart, but for marijuana I'd rather see the same solutions we apply to alcohol. Prohibition isn't working. The crackdown on medical marijuana is an example of how ludicrous the system has become.

The $20-30 it costs to incarcerate someone could treat a larger number of out-patient addicts.

That's because you see the failures, day in, day out. What you don't see is the millions of people doing recreational drugs without going to hell in a handbasket. They don't make the news or the institutions unless they get caught. Then they become examples and pay for breaking the law even though the worse thing they did was......break the law.
I've seen what can happen when someone uses a motor vehicle irresponsibly but I wouldn't advocate nobody being allowed to drive. :headshake

I have no problem with you questioning anything I've said. But you have yet to provide a valid example. I have given absolutely perfect and indisputable reasoning.

If you say that governments can have powers that individuals don't, could you please tell me where you think governments derive their powers from. It can't be from "the people" if it has a power that "the people" don't have as individuals. So by all means, enlighten me. Where do governments get their powers from?

If you want to discuss unions, they have no powers that individuals don't have. They just have a louder voice. They are merely groups of individuals using their indivual voices to send the same message. Do individuals have the right to protest? Yes. Do individuals have the right to tell their employer they want more money? Yes. Do individuals have the right to walk out of their job if they don't get what they want? Yes. Do individuals have the right to bargain and enter into contracts? Yes.

Unions have no powers over and above those of individual people. They are merely a group of people sending the same message so it will be heard more loudly.

Government's on the other hand claim to have powers that individuals don't have. Do individuals have the right to tell other individuals how they may defend themselves when attacked? No. Do individuals have the right to tell other individuals whom they may or may not marry? No. Do individuals have the right to tell other people what medicines they may take? What they may or may not eat? Whether or not they will procreate? No.

So how then do you think government has this power? The founders of this government stated clearly that the limited powers of our government don't come from god, but from the people. The only powers our government has are those that the individuals of this country have to grant to the government.

Your examples are worse than comparing an apple to an orange. It's more like comparing apples to Buicks. You compare a group of people exercising their rights together to a group of people exercising powers that they don't rightfully have. In otherwords, you're claiming that people have no property rights if a large group of thieves decide to steal from them. Nobody has the right to steal from someone else so they can't grant that right to a group of people.

I don't think anyone is disputing whether or not drugs are bad for you. That's not the issue. The issue is whether or not government is here to protect us from our own bad decisions and the answer to that is a resounding HELL NO!

I've seen the good and bad side of drugs personally. I wouldn't recommend them to anyone...(other than ecstacy or marijuana) :) but the fact remains that it's not the place of government to stop people from being stupid. If it were, all the people who voted for Bush would be in prison.

People own themselves, and they own their lives just like they own their property. They can do something great with that property, or they can destroy it. Either way, it's not up to you or anyone else to force them to take any particular course of action unless that person is physically harming or endangering a non-consenting other or their property.

Fast food is very bad for you. Do you think government should ban fast food and arrest people who eat it? :headshake My guess is no. If not, why not? How is it different than telling other people what drugs they may or may not take?

I see where you're coming from, and even if I agree with you in principle, I think that the practical outweighs it on the drug issue.

I've spent a lot of time speculating about life after the legalization of drugs ... of course, this is a very personalized view, and includes the hell my work-life would become if every single goddamn one of those junkies decided they wanted treatment.

Of course, in my perfect world, everybody gets ONE government funded attempt at rehab.

The disease model is thrown out.

A lot of people die of overdoses in the first six months to a year from the WHOO HOO factor, but then it levels off.

Oh, yeah, and they have to develop a breath-a-lyzer for drugs. Even with current laws getting people on DUI for anything other than alcohol is tough.

Economic Left/Right 6.0, Social Libertarian/Authoritarian -2.46

Right-Libertarian, bigtime, and not as anarchist as a good many.