Red and Blue Addicts

In this month’s issue of Reason Cathy Young has a column in which she quotes James Madison. He wrote, ”Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops every other.”The absolute truth of this insight, as the work of Robert Higgs and others too numerous to mention has shown, is even more remarkable when you consider that at the time Madison penned the above there was no neverending war on people who use certain kinds of drugs or perpetual war on terror.

These two wars now effect almost all aspects of our lives, from the most mundane events such as how much humiliation someone must endure in order to board an airplane to serious issues such as whether someone must live the rest of their life in constant pain because no doctor wants the DEA to come down on them for prescribing a disfavored medicine that would help. In comparison to questions of war or peace all other issues have, in my mind, considerably less significance. Therefore, I worry very little about the divide between red states and blue ones because both sets of states voted overwhelmingly in favor of war, domestic and foreign.

George Bush got us into the bloody quagmire that is Iraq but all John Kerry ever promised was to involve more people. George Bush, despite his past illicit drug use, has fought as unrelenting a jihad, against people who use drugs not profitable to pharmaceutical companies, as his father did. John Kerry chose as his chief foreign policy advisor one of the architects of Plan Columbia, which includes the spraying of toxic chemicals on dirt poor peasant coca farmers, their families, and their food crops. While in the Senate, Kerry sought a government key to everyone’s computer in the name of fighting drugs, as well as, expanded use of asset forfeiture. And, just as Madison predicted, expand this drug fighting tool has, into all sorts of areas that have nothing to do with drugs.

Awhile back, too long ago for a link to be available, I referred to my friend Jeffery Stonehill’s idea of “America’s Drug of War” when I wrote, “Some of them need it for the material gain that will come their way. Pundits, politicians, prison guards and contractors all reap benefits. However, many if not most supporters need the war narcotic for their pride, for the rush they get out of feeling superior to other human beings.” Whatever the cultural reasons for America’s addiction to war they clearly exist in all states, red and blue, because in each of these states 98 to 99 percent of the voters chose a candidate whose actions in office and campaign had been one long repudiation of peace.