Lost political causes
By William Buckley
Published March 24, 2000
The undoing of Bill Bradley and John McCain begs for posthumous analysis, and there is much of it going on. George Will, for instance, identifies one lesson of the primary -- "that race has lost its saliency with Democrats." Why? Because "race relations have never been better, and arguably would be better still if there were less obsessing about them."
Mark Helprin, in a remarkable essay in The Wall Street Journal, reminded Senator McCain that it is not an effective way of increasing the Republican vote to adopt a rhetoric that soon sounded as though only Democrats really make good Republicans. Mr. McCain's proposals were unintegrated, he further complained, and one of them -- the limit on spending -- honorably rejected by the common allegiance to free expression.
Some "causes" are known ahead of time to be dead, or sleeping, and ride without protest in the back of the bus in campaign after campaign, but someday there will be a Rosa Parks in the act.
Noah Pollak is a very bright student at the University of Vermont who has written an account of a conglomerate assembly in November of the Students for Sensible Drug Policy. The drug-reform people operate under almost as many tents as the communist fellow travelers used to do: There were hundreds upon hundreds of committees plying for one or another of the Soviets' myriad concerns (Free Bobby Seale, Fair Play for Cuba, End Jim Crow in Baseball).
The loose coalition that argues for a reform of the marijuana laws has a very small cadre. The governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson, is the one successful living political operator who publicly bemoans the drug laws, though you can add Kurt Schmoke, the former mayor of Baltimore. George Soros is the patron provider of the movement, acting through the Lindesmith Center, which is deftly managed by political scientist Ethan Nadelmann. And there is Richard Cowan, the movement's senior journalist. He has just now suspended his Web site, Marijuananews.com, after 40-odd years in the struggle, probably to sit back, have a few tokes, and maybe come back and fight again when the political weather changes.
It is interesting to compare the relative attention given over the years to injustices, racial and drug-related. It is glib, but unsatisfying, to dismiss the question by saying that there cannot be any such thing as a drug injustice, given that drugs are illegal. That's on the order of saying there isn't racial injustice, given the disproportionate criminal offenses committed by minorities. Always there are distinctions that need to be made.
Suppose that the battery of cameras and reporters who bring to our attention offensive treatment of minorities were to focus on drug victims? Mr. Nadelmann says it neatly, that the "assumptions are that no one is really bothered anymore by marijuana laws, drug arrests are declining and prison sentences are light. And why defend these people anyway? They're probably rotten."
But those assumptions, which underlie the continuing lack of political concern over the drug war, are false. In 1998, about as many Americans were arrested for marijuana offenses as for all violent crimes combined -- 682,885. And 88 percent of those arrests were for simple possession. "Marijuana arrests have doubled during the Clinton years, and have increased fourfold since 1970. Between 1980 and 1994, the number of drug convicts in federal prisons increased 850 percent; in state prisons between 1980 and 1992, the increase was 1,055 percent."
The assembly of which Mr. Pollak writes makes only modest projections. The reformers would like it if five or 10 years from now the attitude toward marijuana were as it is now in most of Europe -- relaxed, and treatment encouraged and available for breaking the habit.
Probably it would be sometime after that that sophisticated Americans would enlist in legions that cried out: Enough! Not one more person sent to jail for puffing the weed. As a society we'll go only so far as to say: It's a lousy idea to experiment with psychotropic drugs, but it's also a lousy idea to forget your morning prayers, and we're not going to send you to jail for doing either.
Mr. Cowan does believe, as do many others who attended the assembly in Washington, that the Web world will make a difference: by generating a knowledge of what it is all about, and of the disproportionate penalties now imposed on the men and women who light up, and find themselves in jail for a year or five or 10.
Write to William Buckley at Universal Press Syndicate:
4520 Main St., Kansas City, Mo. 64111.
www.sacbee.com/voices/nat...00324.html
By William Buckley
Published March 24, 2000
The undoing of Bill Bradley and John McCain begs for posthumous analysis, and there is much of it going on. George Will, for instance, identifies one lesson of the primary -- "that race has lost its saliency with Democrats." Why? Because "race relations have never been better, and arguably would be better still if there were less obsessing about them."
Mark Helprin, in a remarkable essay in The Wall Street Journal, reminded Senator McCain that it is not an effective way of increasing the Republican vote to adopt a rhetoric that soon sounded as though only Democrats really make good Republicans. Mr. McCain's proposals were unintegrated, he further complained, and one of them -- the limit on spending -- honorably rejected by the common allegiance to free expression.
Some "causes" are known ahead of time to be dead, or sleeping, and ride without protest in the back of the bus in campaign after campaign, but someday there will be a Rosa Parks in the act.
Noah Pollak is a very bright student at the University of Vermont who has written an account of a conglomerate assembly in November of the Students for Sensible Drug Policy. The drug-reform people operate under almost as many tents as the communist fellow travelers used to do: There were hundreds upon hundreds of committees plying for one or another of the Soviets' myriad concerns (Free Bobby Seale, Fair Play for Cuba, End Jim Crow in Baseball).
The loose coalition that argues for a reform of the marijuana laws has a very small cadre. The governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson, is the one successful living political operator who publicly bemoans the drug laws, though you can add Kurt Schmoke, the former mayor of Baltimore. George Soros is the patron provider of the movement, acting through the Lindesmith Center, which is deftly managed by political scientist Ethan Nadelmann. And there is Richard Cowan, the movement's senior journalist. He has just now suspended his Web site, Marijuananews.com, after 40-odd years in the struggle, probably to sit back, have a few tokes, and maybe come back and fight again when the political weather changes.
It is interesting to compare the relative attention given over the years to injustices, racial and drug-related. It is glib, but unsatisfying, to dismiss the question by saying that there cannot be any such thing as a drug injustice, given that drugs are illegal. That's on the order of saying there isn't racial injustice, given the disproportionate criminal offenses committed by minorities. Always there are distinctions that need to be made.
Suppose that the battery of cameras and reporters who bring to our attention offensive treatment of minorities were to focus on drug victims? Mr. Nadelmann says it neatly, that the "assumptions are that no one is really bothered anymore by marijuana laws, drug arrests are declining and prison sentences are light. And why defend these people anyway? They're probably rotten."
But those assumptions, which underlie the continuing lack of political concern over the drug war, are false. In 1998, about as many Americans were arrested for marijuana offenses as for all violent crimes combined -- 682,885. And 88 percent of those arrests were for simple possession. "Marijuana arrests have doubled during the Clinton years, and have increased fourfold since 1970. Between 1980 and 1994, the number of drug convicts in federal prisons increased 850 percent; in state prisons between 1980 and 1992, the increase was 1,055 percent."
The assembly of which Mr. Pollak writes makes only modest projections. The reformers would like it if five or 10 years from now the attitude toward marijuana were as it is now in most of Europe -- relaxed, and treatment encouraged and available for breaking the habit.
Probably it would be sometime after that that sophisticated Americans would enlist in legions that cried out: Enough! Not one more person sent to jail for puffing the weed. As a society we'll go only so far as to say: It's a lousy idea to experiment with psychotropic drugs, but it's also a lousy idea to forget your morning prayers, and we're not going to send you to jail for doing either.
Mr. Cowan does believe, as do many others who attended the assembly in Washington, that the Web world will make a difference: by generating a knowledge of what it is all about, and of the disproportionate penalties now imposed on the men and women who light up, and find themselves in jail for a year or five or 10.
Write to William Buckley at Universal Press Syndicate:
4520 Main St., Kansas City, Mo. 64111.
www.sacbee.com/voices/nat...00324.html
