I Gots My Flippy-Floppies

Imagine if you agreed that your kids could have desert after dinner. Your children decide to make desert out of an eight ball of cocaine. So you “flip-flop” and veto the desert bill. That seems reasonable, right?

I’m tired of the phrase “flip-flopper,” used to describe politicians who have the audacity to change their minds. For much the same reason, I’m tired of hearing politicians congratulate themselves for their “consistency” (real or imaginary).

When Senator John Kerry ran for President of the United States, his opponents called him a flip-flopper for supporting certain bills before voting against them, and vice versa (of course, many of those critics changed their own minds just as often). However, most of those bills—like the desert menu mentioned above—changed at some point between Kerry’s initial support and vetoing.

We should all be flip-floppers. If you can go through life without changing your mind on an issue, you’re a stubborn-minded fool, willfully ignorant. Each new experience ought to change your worldviews. There’s nothing wrong with admitting you’re wrong and correcting your opinions. Most Americans lack such discipline.

Even if you “know it all” today, tomorrow will provide you with a different world, with new rules, especially if you work in politics.

However, there exists a difference between Kerry and current presidential hopeful, Mitt Romney. Many of Romney’s Republican competitors call Romney a flip-flopper, and while I clearly despise the phrase, Romney’s competitors make a fair point.

Romney changes his opinions to reflect whatever the polls tell him his current spectators want to hear. One could argue that such practices aren’t debauched. If we live in a democracy, shouldn’t the president bow to the will of the majority?

No. The trouble with politicians chasing poll numbers is that, by doing so, they set aside the democratic process. Our forefathers created democracy as a means to ensure that everyone, even the minority, had a voice. The utilitarian view of “the greatest happiness for the greatest number” is not democracy. It’s Mob Rule.

People argue that mob rule and democracy are interchangeable. They are wrong. Democrats make this faulty comparison as often as Republicans do. For Libertarians, it proves a bodily function. If most people want to legalize <blank>, Libertarians say, then democracy demands that we do so, because it’s what most people want. Legalizing something because “most people want it legalized” isn’t grounds for doing so.

If four men gang rape a woman, then, in accordance with mob rule, it should be legal, because eighty percent of the people involved voted for it. I know this sounds incalculably crass, but I can’t think of a better metaphor. Democracy isn’t mob rule, because is creators designed democracy to prevent the majority from fucking the minority.

So why doesn’t it always work out that way? In small part, it’s because politicians worry about polls. This is why it took so long to grant women the right to vote. It’s why slavery took so long to abolish. It’s why Equal-Pay-for-Equal-Work hasn’t met success. It’s why illegal aliens are so easily mistreated. It’s how our state governments get away with requiring a drug test from welfare recipients (so much for “innocent until proven guilty”).

Politicians shouldn’t concern themselves only with what voters want to hear. Quite often, what people want to hear isn’t the right thing to say at all.

Newt Gingrich is an irredeemable racist, but he’s also unapologetic about it. Santorum is a Bible-thumping sexist and homophobe, but we know where he stands. Ron Paul is a lunatic, but a consistent lunatic. While I would prefer that these three candidates would open their minds and alter their points of view, voters at least comprehend these candidates’ intentions. That’s why Republican voters have the “Anyone but Mitt” mentality.

These are your options, Republicans. If you want a narrow-minded president who will never admit a mistake (and you Republicans so often do), you have three candidates from which to choose. Take your pick. If you want a president who will and say whatever the polls tell him to (unless and until he wins the election), you can go with Mitt.

I say this with no quantity of glee. I do not envy your positions, Republicans. It’s enough to make a person invest in antidepressants and antacids.

GI Jane, Judy, and Ethal

While women have served in the United States Army since 1775, the government has previously limited their roles to those of nurses, tailors, and cooks. Not until the twentieth century did females qualify for true soldier status, and even then, their roles remained restricted. As of last Thursday, those restrictions have weakened.

The Department of Defense announced last Thursday that they would open more than 14,000 new MOSs to their female soldiers. Good news, right? Well, not according to certain politicians and pundits, the majority of which are Republican.

Presidential hopeful, Rick Santorum expressed concerns that the presence of female soldiers closer to the battle lines would trigger “emotional reactions” from their male counterparts, impairing those counterparts’ abilities to carry out their missions. Fox News commentator, Liz Trotta told her viewers that female soldiers should “expect to be raped” by their male colleagues.

Such opinions are nothing new. For years, Rush Limbaugh told listeners of his radio program that women are “too emotional” to serve on the front lines. Such thinking isn’t limited to Republicans, either. Democratic commentator, Bill Maher once said that he preferred that men serve as firefighters and police officers. Maher stated that if he found himself in a burning building, he would prefer a male firefighter drag him to safety, because a man would more likely possess the physical strength to do so.

Let’s tackle these opinions one at a time. First: Santorum’s concerns that women will distract men on the battlefield. Setting aside the fact that there isn’t a female hot enough to distract anyone from incoming mortars, Santorum’s statement suggests that all men suffer from an ADD so severe that perhaps we should replace them all with women. Worst, this line of logic punishes women for faults Santorum foresees in men.

Following this line of thinking, any employer could argue against hiring a woman because she might distract her male coworkers, thus blaming her for her coworkers’ lacking attention spans.

According to Liz Trotta, a female soldier left alone in a foxhole with a man ought to expect him to rape her. I can’t decide if that statement is more sexist against men or women. Again, we’re blaming women for the actions of men. Does Trotta believe that our male soldiers are that undisciplined? Yes, rapes have occurred in the military, but the blame rests with the rapists, not their victims. The idea of disallowing good women to serve their country for fear of bad men makes little sense.

An employer of any business could follow Trotta’s logic as an excuse to prevent women from working anywhere. We can’t allow women to work in hospitals; there’re men there, and they’ll rape the women. We can’t allow women to work in schools; there’re men there, and they’ll rape the women. So on and so forth.

Oh! And as someone who’s dug and slept in a foxhole, I can assure you that no one possess the stamina for post-foxhole-digging sex, consensual or otherwise.

Next, let’s appraise Rush Limbaugh’s remarks. “Women are too emotional” for the front lines? Which gender do you suppose commits more crimes of passion? Which gender more often commits suicide? How often do you read a news article about a woman who loses her job, shows up for work with a shotgun, and starts offing her former coworkers? How many women can you name who, after being threatened with divorce, murder their spouse and children? While these actions are committed on both side of the gender fence, there’s little questioning which side the ratio weighs heavier.

Men are arguably more emotional than women are, but society has taught men to hide their emotions. Failing to vent one’s frustrations, as society allows women to, is a likely candidate for why men are so disposed to violent, emotional outbursts.

By the way, our military mandates training programs called Basic Training and AIT. If a soldier hasn’t the emotional fortitude for the battlefield, that deficiency will likely surface during these training programs, long before that soldier ever sees combat. This is why Bill Maher’s concerns fall short of logical. If a candidate for the fire or police department cannot complete his or her training, than he or she will not join its ranks.

We cannot claim that we fight for the same equality that terrorists despise when we, ourselves, practice inequality. Such policies forge glaring hypocrisies that syphon away our credibility. How can anyone trust us to treat him or her fairly when we fail to treat each other with the same impartiality?

Stossel Screams for Ice Cream

The reason that I’m singling out Stossel here isn’t that I think he’s an over-the-top, out-of-control lunatic. Quite the opposite. If I offered counterarguments to Glenn Beck’s libertarian views, I wouldn’t have a very fair fight on my hands. Punching holes in Beck’s theories proves as challenging as finding an out-of-shape virgin at a Star Trek convention.

Since I’m the biggest nerd alive, I spent my childhood, Friday night’s watching 20/20. I enjoyed Stossel’s arguments. I even agreed with many of them. Occasionally, he even managed to make me see things in a fresh light, an experience to which I’ve always felt drawn.

I’ve read Stossel’s book, Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity, as well as Give Me a Break. He has likely published more since these two have hit shelves. I’ve also watched his show, Stossel, named, I presume, after his father. While most natives of Fox communicate through screaming and Bible thumping, Stossel offers a refreshing change of course: low-drama and forethought. He’s mellow. While other Fox anchors preach doomsday, Stossel often seems to say, “Everything is going to be fine. Relax.”

However, I frequently disagree with Stossel on a variety of issues. Here are a few.

On his show, Stossel frowns at the notion of urging Americans to “get out and vote.” He argues that many Americans haven’t the knowledge needed to make an informed decision at the polls, and that therefore no one should push these ignorant people towards the ballot boxes, where they will make a random and misinformed decision with which the rest of us have to live. I get what Stossel’s saying here, but I don’t agree with the notion of discouraging the ignorant from voting. Instead, we should push to educate them—with unbiased education, of course.

Stossel has suggested that the price of gasoline is a bargain (this suggestion occurred a few years back when the price skyrocketed). He asked his readers to compare, pricewise, a gallon of gas to a gallon of premium ice cream—overlooking the fact that the average American doesn’t need a gallon of Eddy’s Cookies and Cream to pick the kids up from soccer.

Gasoline is a must-have for anyone who hopes to function in a city that doesn’t provide reliable, affordable, public transportation (the public transit here in Orlando is neither). Premium ice cream is a treat. The two are incomparable. At least, they ought to be. I felt reminded of this appraisal when a Fox News anchor said, “If you can afford a five-dollar Frappuccino, then you can afford your five-dollar copay [for birth control].”

Like gasoline, birth control is a must-have. A Frappuccino is not. In one argument, Stossel assumes that the same people bemoaning the price of gas are happy to fork out money for premium ice cream. In another, an anchor assumes that women who can’t afford a copay are enjoying a morning Frappuccino apiece.

People struggling to keep their gas tanks wet are not snacking on Eddy’s. Women who cannot afford a copay are not gulping down a Frappuccino every morning. I could make a similar argument that the price of reconstructive surgery is a bargain—when compared to the price of a Ferrari. These arguments all steam from the belief that if you can afford trivial things, you can afford important things. Many people can’t afford either.

Like presidential hopeful and libertarian, Ron Paul, Stossel believes that America ought to end its drug war. I agree. But Paul and Stossel want to reduce government regulations, without which we would undermine the benefits of legalizing drugs (see my earlier post, Sex, Drugs, and Ron Paul for more on this counterargument).

Stossel frequently discusses the benefits of privatization, almost to the point of suggesting that we ought to privatize every service offered in our country. This would backfire. The privatization of prisons is one example upon which I intend to explore fully in a future blog.

I like Stossel’s cool-headed rationalizations. I like the fact the he permits his guests to speak. He usually avoids the obnoxious showmanship favored by his Fox Network peers. Occasionally, he “makes a point” by hitting a car with a hammer or driving a scooter through a stack of boxes. Since these stunts usually kick-start his show, I suppose he’s just trying to grab viewers before they change the channel. Rarely, he does something mind-numbingly stupid (who amongst us hasn’t?), like the time he placed a telephone in the middle of the set of his show and more-or-less dared President Obama to call and debate with him on the air, as if the President of the Free World might not have something a bit more pressing occupying his plate.

It’s beginning to seem that libertarians fall into two categories. One (Stossel and Paul) proves thoughtful but often misguided about what policies will actually work. The other category (Beck) is just the opposite, spewing nonsense as loudly as possible. It always seems that those lacking in reason attempt to compensate by screaming, as if a falsehood were just a truth whispered a bit too low. Stossel doesn’t do a lot of screaming. I don’t think he’s ever raised his voice. I’ve seen Ron Paul attempt to scream; he didn’t seem to have had a lot of practice at it. I imagine that this is because Stossel and Paul can make very reasonable arguments that, in a better world, might actually have merit.

The 99 have problems, but upward mobility ain't one

Just recently in Oakland, an “anti-Wall Street” protest (I am still uncertain what, exactly, is meant by “anti-Wall Street,” and I’m losing faith that the protestors do, either) turned violent. Police arrested over four hundred of the over five hundred protestors who threw pipes and bottles at them. Some of the protestors burned an American flag.

Last October, in a separate protest, a teargas canister fired by police struck protester and former Marine, Scott Olsen in the head. The extent of Olsen’s injuries, if any, have not yet been released, but many of those arrested in Oakland cite Olsen harm as the insubstantial justification for their obscene, destructive, and profitless behavior.

Martin Luther King, Jr. did not achieve his ends through violence, and neither shall we. Demonstrations such as the one in Oakland only encourage the misbelief that those calling themselves the 99% and those sympathetic to them are out-of-control anarchists.

Actually, I would like to take a timeout here to address this term, “anarchist,” because I intend to use it again during this posting. I believe that a world without the need of a governing body should serve as a model for every government’s endgame. This makes me sound like a libertarian, but I consider myself far removed from that party’s current ideologies. I plan to address this issue more in my next posting, though I will admit right now that most true libertarians have beautiful, if impractical, intensions.

Most people—to include most of those idiots who consider themselves anarchists— misunderstand the term. We associate anarchy with rioting, arson, looting, and worse. By this point, we might as well redefine anarchism to reflect such a dystopian setting (some dictionaries have). But anarchism means (used to mean) that people demonstrate the opposite behavior, that people get along to the point that a governing body to police them becomes unnecessary. It’s a nice thought. Perhaps, one day, such a world will grow feasible. Currently, it is not. Sorry libertarians (as I said, I’ll discuss this further in my next posting).

For now, back to the <sigh> rioting.

I remember attending occupy Orlando. I remember leaving after the first hour, having realized by that point that my attendance would prove a complete waste of time. The protesters—much like those in the “Occupy” protests around the country and even in parts of Europe—had no freak’n clue what they hoped to accomplish. They had no set goals, no demands, and no idea how they would achieve those goals or demands. They had chants and cheers, though. Lots of them. In most cases, those chants and cheers rhymed and fit nicely on picket signs.

The occupy movement is largely credited with having started when several of America’s unemployed, in an act of raw frustration, decided to camp out on Wall Street. They had hoped to make the rest of the country take notice of them and (in many cases) their college loans, upon which they had defaulted. Nearly each protestor arrived in a clean suit, with a college degree and an impressive résumé in one hand, and, in her or his other hand, unpaid bills and eviction notices. Then, idiots poured in.

People came to chant mindless catch phrases. People came to juggle and wear silly costumes. One man arrived dressed as a Viking, another as an alien from Star Trek. If any of these "protestors” had a plan for fixing their grievances (assuming they had any), few presented those plans in an executable format.

Instead of frustrated, unemployed people staying home and going unheard and unrepresented, frustrated, unemployed people came to Wall Street to go unheard beneath the riotous cheering of other people who just wanted to jump onto the bandwagon.

This “movement” spread like a disease across Paris Hilton’s groin. Since few of the attendees had any clue why they had even arrived, it proved easy for certain news reporters with agendas, such as Fox News, to pick out and carry on interviews with confused idiots. These idiots happily supplied the airwaves with such gems as, “The rich are evil,” “Corporations are bad,” and “Down with government.” During the Black Friday sales events, many people pretending to be sympathetic to the 99% decided to block doors, disallowing shoppers access to the stores, because “Corporations are evil” (for the most part, the shoppers just shoved them out of the way).

Corporations are not evil any more than .357 is evil; evil people can use both for evil purposes, but our country can’t survive without businesses. I like having giant bookstores and gyms. I like getting to choose between Outback Steakhouses and vegan restaurants (though everyone at the latter dresses up as if they’re going to some weird, tree-worshipping service).

Businesses create jobs. Jobs are good. Our country’s lack of jobs served as the catalyst to this whole “occupy” movement. Those fed up Americans who started the movement, before it transformed into a circus, didn’t want to destroy businesses, they wants those businesses to offer them each a job.

Certain people—such as those working for Fox News—would have us believe that the middle and lower classes have some vendetta against the successful, that we wish to wage class warfare against them. We don’t. We just want our upward mobility back. Most of us are all too willing to work. Studies show that unemployment is a massive source of stress and depression. Few people want to sit around and do nothing. Have you ever met a retired person who didn’t search desperately for something to obsess about?

I’ve spoken with people who, although not rich, are “well off.” These people tell me that they haven’t turned a profit in years. To the lower and most of the middle class, this is a death sentence. One person angrily informed me that when he finished college (back in the seventies), he bussed tables for years before he found work in his field. He wanted to know why my useless generation wasn’t willing to do the same thing.

We are. Where are the tables?

My fists clench when I hear about entire families who live generation after generation on welfare—but this stereotype is no longer, if it ever was, the norm. Our country is overflowing with men and women who have been able to support themselves all their lives until recently. Saturated in their own shame, they now need governmental assistance just to feed their families. I can’t imagine how that must feel. Now those failed by their government face demonization by their government.

Welfare recipients are easy to demonize. They’re lazy, right? That’s the only reason that they can’t find work. Right?

If you’re a lawyer prosecuting a supposed rapist, you want men with daughters on the jury. Why not women? (Stay with me here. I’m bringing this back to the topic at hand. Promise.) According to what I’ve read on jury selection, it is because women are more likely to believe that they would never fall victim to rape so long as they “play by the rules.” Don’t leave your drink unattended. Don’t go to a club while wearing an overly provocative dress. So, these studies would suggest, women, out of a subconscious need to separate themselves from the victim, are more likely to place portions of blame on a rape victim. “This person did something wrong,” the logic goes. “Something I would never do. Therefore, I will never find myself in this person’s shoes.”

Perhaps this is why so many people hate former Penn State Coach, Joe Paterno after he more-or-less ignored evidence of child molestation by his colleague, Jerry Sandusky. After all, we would never ignore such evidence, right? Right?

“If I work really hard and do everything perfect, I’ll never end up losing my job and needing governmental assistance. Right?” When we fear sharing another person’s fate, we tend to demonize that other person, to place the blame squarely upon his or her shoulders. That’s why it’s easy for our government “go after” those on welfare.

Imagine that you’re a single mother. You’ve been out of work for three years now. You’re a professional with a college degree and a long work history, but employment in your town has vaporized. You’ve sold your car. You’ve swallowed your pride and applied for welfare. You’ve had to move your family to a less-than-safe neighborhood.

You haven’t given up, though.

You’ve never stopped searching for work. You’ve sent your résumé all over the country. You’re willing to move anywhere. Perhaps you’ll return to school. Things will get better. They have to. This is America.

Then, one day, your city passes one of our Welfare to Work Programs, or one of the programs that run along the same lines. While some of these programs work remarkably well, there are others. Your city just passed one of those “others.” All of the sudden, you have to get up at five in the morning, make a bagged lunch for your children before you walk to the nearest bus stop. You ride a bus to the other side of town, only to get off, fill out a mountain of paperwork, get on another bus, go to another part of town, work four hours for less money than you took in while on welfare, take an hour lunch where you sit and ignore your growling stomach, work another four hours, fill out more paperwork, get back on one bus, get on another bus, walk home, and crash onto your bed to get a little sleep before you have to do it all over again tomorrow.

A person in such a program has lost many options for improving her life.

How about the idea of asking welfare recipients to submit to drug tests prior to receiving their checks? What’s wrong with that? Shouldn’t the taxpayer deny federal aid to a drug addict?

Not so fast. What people fail to realize is that welfare recipients must not only make the trip downtown to take their drug test, but that they are also each expected to pay for the drug test. If you’re on welfare, scraping together the bus fare for the trip downtown proves difficult enough. Coughing up money for the test might prove impossible.

The second that you cannot afford to take the test the day it’s due, you risk losing your benefits forever.

Now you have to explain to a potential employer that you lost your benefits because you “declined” a drug test.

The trouble with our thinking towards welfare is that we’re always searching for a system to weed out those who don’t “truly deserve it.” This does nothing long-term to help those who do, and therefore does nothing to help America, or the world, as a whole. We ought to better aim our focus at offering the poor real opportunities to improve their lives so that they can improve our country. Making a poor person travel sixty miles a day to sweep floors or paint fences for a hopeless wage is not a long-term option. It’s a Band-Aid over a sucking chest wound.

A person who loses his or her welfare benefits seems a lot more likely to commit a crime. It cost the American taxpayer far more to imprison someone than to send them to college. It seems, at a minimum, a preventative measure to send our underclass to college. In most of Europe, college is free, and the number of prisoners in all of Europa doesn’t hold a candle to the number we put behind bars here in the States.

“Where’s the money going to come from?” I can hear you asking. “How can we afford to send everyone to college for free?” Again, it’s cheaper than putting the poor in prison. It’s cheaper than putting the poor on welfare. It’s also cheaper than sending the poor to war.

The protestors who mindlessly chant, “Corporations are evil,” don’t know what they’re talking about, and they aren’t newsworthy. Those idiots should not serve as a typical sample of the countless fed-up Americans struggling to find fulltime employment.

Most Americans don’t want to “punish the wealthy for their success.” We’re just tired of seeing the deck so stacked against us. We’re tired of facing that ultra wide gap between peace-of-mind and struggling-just-to-come-up-for-air. And the deck is stacked. From tax loopholes, to higher interest rates, to unreasonable late fees, reconnection fees, and overdraft fees, getting out of debt is a little like climbing out of a tar pit. This is why the real 99% (not the partying and rioting protestors) are frustrated.

So please, news reporters, stop wasting time interviewing morons who brainlessly repeat phrases like “Corporations are evil,” and start reporting on the real issues that are causing the real hindrances. For the greater part, the poor and middle class do not hate the wealthy. We want to be the wealthy. We want success and a place in life in which we can take pride, and we want that pride in the form of gainful employment. We’re not asking that the government “punish the rich,” just that they level the playing field a bit.

Most of the poor and middle class work hard. They maintain an America that allows the wealthy to stay wealthy. Wait for the garbage men to go on strike. Lose the construction workers, plumbers, oil-changers, educators, daycare workers, and taxi drivers. Lose the people that brew your coffee, print your business cards, or detail your car. America will always need these people. Let’s reward their hard work by ensuring that they each have the opportunity to work harder at something greater.

Nothing, nothing, proves more American than upward mobility. Level the playing field so that we can each play our parts to the best of our ability and accomplish our person destinies in what little time we each have in this world.

Sex, Drugs, and Ron Paul

Ron Paul has some beautiful ideas that will never work—at least not as a packaged deal. While some of his goals as a presidential hopeful are unfeasible under any probable circumstance, a few aren’t bad, so long as he does not realize the latter ideas alongside the former. Okay. That was a mouthful. Let me explain. Let’s start with his proposal to legalize drugs.

According to one report on http://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp, The U.S. federal government spent over $19 billion dollars in 2003 on the War on Drugs, at a rate of about $600 per second. Our government recently increased that budget by over a billion dollars. As most wars are, it’s a pointless war.

You cannot win a war on drugs any sooner than you could a war on terrorism. A person can grow illegal drugs from the ground. A person can manufacture illegal drugs by mixing legal chemicals found in aisle nine at Publix. A person can take “un-recommended doses” of legal drugs. A person can huff anything from spray paint to cow poop. Worse, by making something illegal, you only open the door for a black market, a door through which violent criminals will pour (see the prohibition of alcohol in this country from 1920 to 1933).

If someone wants to get high, she or he will. Adrenalin junkies leap out of perfectly good airplanes. I wouldn’t want my son (or daughter, whatever) to abuse cocaine. However, if he did decide to snort a little powder, I would prefer that he went across the street to Walgreens and buy his coke there, as oppose to going into a questionable neighborhood and buying who-knows-what from who-knows-whom. This is a safety issue that doesn’t begin and end with the neighborhood from which this imaginary son would purchase his coke. The safety issue extends even more so to the question of what’s inside his cocaine. Suggesting that the future distributors of legalized drugs like cocaine print nutrition facts, such as ingredients, on their labels sounds ridiculous, I know, but . . .

Perhaps you have heard some of the terrible “fillers” found in most illegal drugs. Only the most dedicated junkie would purchase a bag of coke with “cement powder,” “rat poison,” or “Ajax” appearing within the list of ingredients. You may have heard of Krocodile (spellings of this drug vary), the illegal, Russian substitute from heroin. If—and only if—you have a strong stomach, you might want to watch some of the online videos featuring what has become of the abusers of Krocodile. After only a few hits, the abusers’ skin and meat rot off their bones. The FDA would never approve this drug, but since Krocodile is illegal, the FDA has no voice in the matter.

If we legalize illegal drugs, we will create safer options for users—both in regards to where they buy their drugs and what’s inside their drugs. Fewer poisonous ingredients mean fewer people in the emergency room. Fewer people in the emergency room mean fewer hospital beds and dollars wasted (to say nothing of human life). So, it seems, Ron Paul’s proposal to legalize these drugs has merit. Right? Well, hang on, because when you include another one of Ron Paul’s beliefs, you subtract all the benefits of this one.

Ron Paul is a libertarian. He believes that the government shouldn’t regulate businesses. He believes that Americans can make informed decisions for themselves regarding what they wish to purchase and place inside their bodies. The trouble with this line of thought is that Americans can only make informed decisions because of government regulations. Do you believe that Pepsi would list its ingredients and nutrition facts if they didn’t have to? Years ago, they didn’t have to, and they didn’t do it. Prior to government intervention, tobacco companies didn’t put warning labels on their products; they hired doctors to go on the radio and tell my grandparents that cigarettes were healthy.

If you legalize drugs such as cocaine, but also remove the FDA, little changes. Yes, you could purchase your cocaine from Walgreens, and I suppose that is an improvement, but you won’t have a list of ingredients to consider before sticking a straw up your nose. The same issues arise where prostitution is concerned.

If we legalize prostitution, the government can regulate it. Our government can threaten to yank a prostitute’s licenses if she fails to get a weekly blood test. Again, this only works if the government regulates what it legalizes.

Illegal prostitution and drug trafficking lead to violent crimes. They lead to death and suffering. They cost billions to “fight.” They result in people going to prison and carrying with them from the rest of their lives a felon’s status. Let’s put drug dealers, gangs, and pimps out of business. Let’s legalize their trades, and therefore make their products safer to purchase and use. Remember: such legalization grows pointless if a governing body does not meanwhile regulate what it legalizes.