“Change in a trice
The lilies and languors of virtue
For the raptures and roses of vice.”
~ Algernon Swinburne
“It is the function of vice to keep virtue within reasonable bounds.”
~ Samuel Butler
The murders of four RCMP officers in Alberta will be made all the more tragic if their deaths produce a legacy of national reaction for more recidivist blue laws that seek to regulate morality and legislate virtue. For that reason this weekend’s adoption by the Liberal convention of a resolution to toughen laws against marijuana growers is cause for concern.
Recent history, from the time of Prohibition in 1920’s America, has demonstrated that attempts by the state to engage in social engineering are doomed to failure. People will get what they want. And in so doing strengthen the so-called criminal elements among us. The only proper role for state security is to protect citizens from violence and from threats of, or incitement to, violence.
The four officers died enforcing drug laws that had no business being on the books. And from the time of Trudeau successive governments have tried, and failed, in the face of virulent opposition from the retrograde right, to get them off the books. The gun laws that have so far cost a staggering $1 billion, with no Commission of Inquiry, are just as futile because criminals don’t register. It shouldn’t take a kick in the head for our legislators to understand this simple reality.
To those who would argue that the health costs of indulgence in tobacco, alcohol and drugs are a strain on the health-care system, we would remind them that citizens who indulge in hedonistic pleasures pay enormous consumption taxes on the products they buy--eight times greater than average Canadians--most of which go to support the health-care system, They also tend to die younger thereby being less of a burden on the chronic-care system. That is their choice. And choices, as Justice Minister Cotler has pointed in his arguments for studying the decriminalization of assisted suicide, are the point of a free society.
When Trudeau said that government has no place in the bedrooms of the nation he also meant that it had no role regulating actions of consenting adults. Not everything is going to be perfect in life. Not every problem can be solved by legislation. No politician should pretend it can and be allowed to put into force straightjacket law that seeks to micro-manage every aspect of our lives. They should be exposed for what they truly are. Unimaginative and cowardly functionaries staggering from election to election who, fearful of tackling the vested interests on the really important issues necessary to protect the public good, hope that creating some body of work will provide just enough fodder for some publicity come election time. As Tacitus wrote, “When the state is most corrupt, the laws are most multiplied.”
Canada’s political elite can truly be called the new prohibitionists. To paraphrase writer Anne Hingston they “Restrict first, discuss never.”
The Federal government makes noises about decriminalizing marijuana, but at the same time proposes to give police unlimited powers to stop drivers for random drug checks in their cars. Quebec Premier Jean Charest, in an effort to placate women’s rights groups, legislates sec.143 of the Labour Code permitting workers to sue employers for the novel tort of “psychological harassment”. Ontario’s Consumer Affairs Minister Jim Watson’s friend dies in an inline-skating accident so everyone in Ontario is forced to wear a helmet if they take a bicycle or scooter. His colleague Gerard Kennedy, the Education Minister, wants teens to stay in school so he orders them not to drop out till age 18, no matter how little they want to be in class and no matter what their parents think. Montreal’s Mayor Gerald Tremblay authorizes police cameras at street level in the city’s Latin Quarter ostensibly to curtail drug sales, but that in fact violate the privacy of all citizens by indiscriminately capturing images of the activities of all passersby.
What the new prohibitionists share is an anti-liberal sentiment in that they seek to curtail the basic liberties of natural law that is the patrimony of every human being. They get away with it because Canadians have surrendered to the sovereignty of self-abnegation. They have become a people plagued by a self-doubt driven by a jealousy of others’ self-belief. And in the process have created a self-imposed tyranny that mutes individual integrity and conscience and trades them for the false security demanded by state-sponsored bucreacratic consensus.
Modigliani’s painting, Dylan Thomas’ poetry, Hemingway’s novels and even Tom Paine’s polemics would be lost to the ages if they had to survive on alfalfa sprouts and vitamins and succumb to political correctness and temperance. Our lives would be the worse for it, devoid of passion or purpose.
Government’s role must be one of persuasion and education, not compulsion and coercion, no matter how odious a citizen’s personal habit may be. The dark-side of our governors is that they engage in unbridled intervention in matters of private domain to punish the governed into virtuous conduct. But legislators don’t know what’s right for us. They barely know what’s right for themselves. The role of the state is to protect us from each other, not from ourselves.
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