[net.politics] Is William Buckley a closet libertarian?

fagin@ucbvax.ARPA (Barry Steven Fagin) (06/03/85)

A small sign of sanity in the conservative movement, from the Houston
Chronicle:

		"The one thing that could be done, overnight, is to 
	legalize the stuff (illegal drugs).  Exit crime and the 
	profits from vice."
		"It is hardly a novel suggestion to legalize dope.  
	Shrewd observers of the scene have recommended it for years.  
	I am on record as having opposed it in the matter of heroin.  
	The accumulated evidence draws me away from my own opposition, 
	on the purely empirical grounds that what we have now is a 
	drug problem plus a crime problem plus a problem of huge export
	capital to the dope-producing countries."
		"Ours is a free society in which oodles of people 
	kill themselves with tobacco and booze.  Some will do so 
	with coke and heroin.  But we should count in the lives 
	saved by having the deadly stuff available at the same
	price as rat poison."

	("Why Not Consider the Dramatic Alternative?", William F. Buckley)

I thought this a refreshing change from the usual conservative nonsense
on the drug problem.  

--Barry
-- 
Barry Fagin @ University of California, Berkeley

mms1646@acf4.UUCP (Michael M. Sykora) (06/04/85)

It's about time.  Nonetheless, I wouldn't call him a closet libertarian
on philosophical grounds.  As I see it, libertarianism's (or at least my
libertarianism's) first objection to prohibition of drugs (or alchohol,
cigarettes, etc.) is that they are government interference in the 
personal choices of individuals.

						Mike Sykora