Recreational Drug Use

by John Young

I recently received a communication asking what I think of recreational drug use. The short answer is that I believe recreational drug use is self-destructive and incompatible with the mandate in our Statement of Ethics that we each and all make the most of ourselves in every way that we can.

Most people engaged in the use of drugs lie to themselves about the effects, and ignore contradictory inputs. After all, if they admitted to themselves the full reality of the situation, there would be no rational alternative but to cease the activity.

I have seen a great deal of potential destroyed by drug use.

About ten years ago, when I was single, I met a girl for coffee at an upscale coffee house. She described how she had just gotten out of a mental hospital as a result of disorders triggered by illegal drugs, and would probably never be right again. She described how, when she had graduated college with a degree in molecular biology, she had high hopes for solving all manner of problems afflicting humanity, but that now she had her hands full because she had to concentrate just to “keep the table under her food solid.” While I certainly had compassion for her, I didn’t ask her out on a second date.

When I was a kid, an older kid who lived next door went to jail for manslaughter. He and his buds had been smoking dope in the midst of transporting some dope for a party. They came upon a bridge and because of the impairment, hit the bridge railings — which led to one of the passengers having his head sheared off of his body.

And I know a man today who has always had enormous potential as a singer, composer and musician. Yet, he has never gone anywhere because his spare cash has gone into dope and the errors in judgment he has made while under the influence of dope — including shoving his pistol into an unsuspecting woman’s nose and threatening to kill her — have landed him in jail for
years at a stretch. He can’t even obtain a decent regular job, much less fulfill his dreams. And as his recreational drug use has progressed, what potential he had to start with has been diminished day by day through destroying his powers of memory, creativity and concentration.

If you are using drugs for recreation and you believe it is not adversely affecting your potential, you are lying to yourself.
Recreational drug use is simply incompatible with being the best you can be, and is thus incompatible with the EAU Statement of Ethics.

But there is another dimension — the law enforcement angle.

I’ll be the first to tell you that the so-called “War on Drugs” is a sham. The illegality makes drugs expensive and profitable — generating billions upon billions of dollars in black-market profits that are used to fund everything from sex slavery to bribing police. It’s a disaster. And the drug war has served to increase the power of the state enormously; especially with regard to the use of informants, entrapment, and civil asset seizure. It has also provided an impetus leading to the militarization of civilian law enforcement that bodes ill for our future freedom.

So I have real issues with the so-called “War on Drugs.”

At the same time, because these drugs ARE illegal, anyone who uses them is putting his or her money into a ruthless and murderous underground economy whose actions almost universally run contrary to the best interests of our Folk.

Most dope originates outside of the U.S., in places like Mexico and Central/South America. When folks here buy it, the money ultimately goes to fatten the coffers of ruthless criminal gangs who have all but out-gunned the civil and military law enforcement authorities of their respective areas of operations. This destabilizes the region leading to economic displacement and the inability to establish the sort of civil order needed to have a functional society. As a result, millions upon millions of refugees are created.

And where do they go? Why … HERE, of course. Illegal drug use is one of the factors that ultimately fuels both legal and illegal immigration.

Meanwhile, the economy and infrastructure created by this trade creates serious power disparities on our side of the border as well. There are entire sections of California, for example, that have been surrendered to the drug gangs in actual written agreements because it is no longer possible to deal with the problem using civilian law enforcement. Those areas will only grow.

This is just the beginning. The entire organizational culture dealing with drugs for recreational use is brutal and inhumane in the extreme; and includes utter insensitivity to human beings to the extent that summary execution, torture, and sexual slavery are common. And the more drugs we use — the bigger this gets.

I’m sure it never crosses whatever passes for a mind in a recreational drug user; but every penny he spends on his “recreation” ultimately goes to support murder, extortion, bribery, rape and more on a grand scale. Contributing to this — voluntarily — is unconscionable.

In an ideal dope-user’s world, maybe things would be different. But we don’t live in that ideal world. Instead, we live in a world in which our decisions make a difference in other people’s lives; and in which buying some marijuana today contributes to a little girl getting raped tomorrow.

Think about it.

Where has John Young Been?

It’s good to be able to post again!

My regular job had an extended emergency that kept me working as much as 36 hours at a pop without rest.

Then, and this is predictable, I got sick. What started as a cold ended up as pneumonia.

But meanwhile, I have been researching a podcast that will be posted this weekend that I’m sure you’ll find very illuminating! This one has sixty-eight citations — so I hope you’ll find what I didn’t accomplish in terms of frequency will be more than balanced by quality and thoroughness.

Now the crisis at work has finally passed, the illness as been beaten with antibiotics and I’m catching up. Soon, you’ll be hearing from me just like usual!

The Bloodshed in Gaza

(Written 12/30/2008)

The Gaza strip is a concentration camp whose borders are controlled by Israel. The people there live in deprivation and want, and aren’t even allowed to receive humanitarian aid in a timely manner.

For days now, Israel has responded to attacks with homemade rockets that are certainly more dangerous than fireworks with full-fledged air-strikes that have killed hundreds and severely injured hundreds more.

Not one innocent civilian should be killed with either American made munitions OR with munitions whose manufacture was made possible by U.S. funding.

The United States, as a government entity, is supposed to represent the will of the American people. As such, American-made bombs carry our implicit endorsement. Therefore, such armament should only be deployed when doing so clearly serves the interests of the American people.

A perusal of Jimmy Carter’s recent book on the topic makes it clear that Israel is acting abominably and in a fashion contrary to even basic human decency — much less upholding the ethical standards that should be required to earn our nation’s endorsement. When Israel uses American weapons to deploy unwarranted or disproportionate force or to engage in behavior such as “collective punishment” which is internationally recognized to be a war crime; it hurts us by destroying our reputation in the world and by exciting animosity against us that need not exist. In the occupied territories, practically everyone knows someone who lost a child — or a limb — to bombs made in the USA.

Allowing Israel to use our munitions and money to advance illegal and immoral behavior only serves to breed generations of dispossessed and anguished people who deeply resent the people of the United States and wish to reciprocate our largess by killing OUR children.

Clearly, this is not in the best interests of the American people.

I am not going to dispute Israel’s right to exist as an ethnic-nationalist Jewish state within its pre-1967 borders. Within that context, Israel has no lesser or greater right to exist than any other state … nor any greater or lesser claim to ethnic exclusivity.

What I WILL dispute is the uncritical support of America’s government for the illegal and immoral actions of that state. Such support effectively protects Israel from the logical consequences of its actions, thus incentivizing outrageous behavior that elicits revulsion in the hearts of millions of reasonable people worldwide — including many Jewish-Americans. With Israel billing itself as an explicitly “Jewish state,” the actions of Israel reflect back upon all of the Jewish people on earth — even those not in Israel and those who object to Israel’s actions. Thus, what should properly be anti-Israeli-government sentiment can too-easily become anti-Jewish sentiment; thereby perpetuating a cycle of anti-Semitism that Israel’s existence was supposed to stop.

In other words, America’s uncritical support of Israel CAUSES rather than diminishes anti-Jewish sentiment by protecting and promoting the most militant and extreme elements of Israeli society; while simultaneously causing anti-American sentiment. This is stupid as it could ultimately lead to the destruction of Israel and put ALL Americans — including Jewish-Americans — in unnecessary and preventable peril of terrorist attacks.

It is high time America heeded George Washington’s advice and stopped all foreign and military aid to all nations — including Israel.

And it is also high time for Israel to be a big boy, stand on its own two feet, and learn how to co-exist with its neighbors by being a good neighbor. The cessation of American support would assist the ascendancy of a more reasonable — and more humane — political class within Israel. This would ultimately be to the benefit of the Palestinians, we Americans, the Israelis, and all of the Jewish Folk.

In the long run, the REAL anti-Semites in this mess are the members of AIPAC who ceaselessly pressure American politicians to engage in behaviors that will ultimately lead to an entire world that despises Israel — not for it’s ethnicity, but for its BEHAVIOR. Intelligent people who think further ahead than next week should de-fund the AIPAC monster and its tentacles as soon as possible. Of course, if we had politicians with backbones, it wouldn’t matter what AIPAC wanted. Then again, if politicians had backbones they probably wouldn’t be politicians.

The Home: Asset or Liability?

A single family home these days is quite expensive. In fact, compared to median wages, it’s more than twice as expensive as it was just 30 years ago; even considering the “housing slump.”

When you buy a house, no matter how you slice it, it’s going to cost a LOT of money.

Rather than buying a house as a “tax deduction” or because you think it will appreciate (maybe it will, maybe it won’t), you should look at a home as though your family is a business and the buildings and land are a capital investment. You should then look to see in what ways that capital can generate revenue that offsets the costs.

For our ancestors, their homes were not simply hotels where they slept when not busy elsewhere. Their homes were the center of their economic lives — a center of production where raw materials were converted to useful products. All over America, pharmacists lived in apartments over top of their shops — where they actually compounded many of their own medicines. Blacksmiths practiced their trade out back. Attorneys had their offices in a first floor room of the house. Practically everyone had a garden out back, the basement was used as a root cellar to store produce and the kitchen generated nearly every meal that was consumed.

In other words, homes were not merely a cost center — they were a revenue center as well. By arranging affairs in this fashion, our ancestors were much more economically secure in terms of the basics of food, shelter and clothing.

One of the problems we face today, as a people, stems from the fundamental way in which we view our home. We think bigger is better, and we think that the best use for acreage is growing grass for which we buy seed, and then buy expensive mowers to cut. This is a mode of behavior that only makes sense for the independently wealthy. For people who actually have to work jobs — it’s a senseless waste. Instead of the home helping the homeowner — it turns into an endless pit of expenditure from which little is recovered.

Oh — you at the back of the class — what’s that? You say the home will appreciate in value?

Okay. Fair enough. Let’s subject this “appreciation in value” to the test to see if it justifies the bushels of money.

Pretend you bought a house in 1978 for $120,000 and that it is now worth $250,000. At first glance, this looks like you are putting $130k in your pocket in pure profit. But are you?

Well, first off, you paid $839/month for 360 months for that house — which comes to $302,000+. So — now where’s your big profit? And then, over that time, you paid property taxes every year; you paid for insurance and the whole nine yards. You probably spent thousands of dollars over thirty years planting grass seed and mowing the lawn.

The bottom line is that buying property for the purpose of realizing a capital gain through appreciation may work for some people in some markets, but is truly no different from betting on the stock market. Maybe you’ll win, maybe you’ll lose. But, in a sense, it is even WORSE than betting on the stock market because most people don’t borrow the money they are using to gamble there. By borrowing the money, you essentially eliminate any gains you would have made by appreciation.

The only way for property to make sense is for it to be viewed as a capital asset that will be USED to accomplish something.

Obviously, when you buy a home you are using it to replace paying rent. So that’s some return there. If you also use it as a place to perform oil changes and minor repairs for the cars in the family, that’s a positive benefit. If you use it as a place to grow and preserve food, that’s a benefit. If you use it as a source of fuel for the wood stove, that’s a benefit. If you use it as a law office — that’s a benefit. If you use it as a place to produce nifty new rifle slings or kits for ham radio operators — that’s a benefit.

The point is that the home, to be anything but a liability, must be turned into a center of production rather than merely a center of consumption.

Think about it.