[Jason Vines]

Every week, I must write an editorial-style article for my Persuasive Writing class. Some editorials, like the first one I did, "Democrats, beware," will appear on the front page of Hypersyllogistic. Others, I will post for reading and debate in this thread.

The second editorial I wrote had to be about a social issue. I entitled it, "Put Capital Punishment to Death":

What does the United States have in common with countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, Egypt, Libya, Vietnam, and Sudan?

Capital punishment is the answer. While the rest of the Western world, and even nations like Russia and South Africa, have abandoned the death penalty, America groups itself with the world's most oppressive regimes by maintaining the archaic practice. While the United States is trying to spread its values around the globe to combat terrorism and tyranny, killing people to say "murder is bad" makes the planet doubt American veracity. The United States should abolish the death penalty now.

Advocates of capital punishment insist it deters potential murderers from carrying out their evil plans. But a New York Times study from a September 22, 2000, article shows the death penalty does not reduce homicide rates in states that use it. Indeed, these states often suffer higher murder rates than non-death penalty states. Of course, this doesn't indicate capital punishment encourages homicide. Yet capital punishment doesn't discourage it, either.

Some death penalty supporters might reply, "So what? Butchers ought to receive what they have given others." H. L. Mencken says such eye for an eye punishment gives a victimized society catharsis after a brutal tragedy. These people should, however, think back to a lesson they learned on the playground as children: "Two wrongs don't make a right." They just perpetuate wrongness, while bringing the victim down to the level of the aggressor.

Certainly, civilization must prevent committers of wrongs from repeating their actions. Courts should imprison murderers forever so they won't kill again. No one should mistake that for mercy, though. If these criminals bear anything resembling a conscience, then it will torment them with their deeds their whole lives. Isn't that self-punishment more appropriate and satisfying than letting these killers escape the burden of guilt with death?

The third editorial I wrote had to debunk something a media outlet or an advocacy organization claimed. In this editorial, I also had to quote someone else in support of my point. I entitled the editorial, "Fox in the Henhouse."

To whom did Fox News anchor Brit Hume compare Republican Congressman Mark Foley, who has resigned over illicit communications with congressional pages?

A comparison to schoolteachers who have sex with their students would have been appropriate. Or noting the similarities between Foley and the "stars" of Dateline NBC's "To Catch a Predator" would have been proper. Instead, as Media Matters of America has observed, Hume compared Foley to Democratic President Bill Clinton and Representative Barney Frank.

Such constitutes yet another example of the bias of Fox News for Republicans and against Democrats. To quote Media Matters, "Neither the Clinton nor the Frank allegations involved minors." This is not to say the behavior of the two Democrats was appropriate. Clinton, by having sexual relations in the Oval Office, tarnished the presidency. And Frank, by allowing a prostitution ring to operate from his apartment, obliterated whatever congressional dignity he might have possessed.

The peccadilloes of Clinton and Frank involved willing adults, though. Foley's actions were magnitudes worse. He sexually harassed children, a monstrosity which alone would eclipse whatever Clinton and Frank did. But Foley also abused his position as a congressman to acquaint himself with the children and shield himself from the consequences of his behavior. In addition, Foley compromised the sanctity of the congressional page system, whereby students nobly learn about how their government works. Will the halls of Congress now acquire the character of the naves of church, which used to embody safety but now exude creepiness?

Fox News once sued a comic for appropriating its slogan, "Fair and Balanced." Another lawsuit might be better: one against Fox News for deceptive advertising. Comparing Bill Clinton and Barney Frank to an online sexual predator like Mark Foley is not "fair and balanced." It is protecting Republicans from the fallout of this catastrophe.

[Jason Vines]

For my fourth editorial, I had to attend an event in the D.C. area and then write about it. I chose a talk by Dr. Michael Shermer called, "Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design."

I entitled my editorial, "Intelligent Design: The True Monkey Business."

No one expects science classes to teach anachronisms like the flatness of the Earth.

And yet, many Americans want to force science teachers to incorporate intelligent design into their lessons. If the intelligent design movement succeeds, then enjoying equal time with evolution?the principle successive genetic mutations can forge new species?will be the notion life is too complex not to have had a designer. This insertion of the intelligent design hypothesis into science courses would be a mistake.

Dr. Michael Shermer, a contributor to Scientific American and the publisher of Skeptic magazine, supported that view in his recent Fairfax talk, "Why Darwin Matters: The Case against Intelligent Design." Calling intelligent design "absurd," Shermer maintained it ultimately reveals nothing. Suppose, he said, humanity did find it had makers. The question would arise, who made the makers? We would be back where we started.

Furthermore, Shermer said, humanity has seen complex systems manifest without design: language, law, and economy. No group assembled at the beginning of human development to craft these phenomena. They formed gradually, over millennia, adapting to the needs of human societies. Why could not life, which experiences mutation, and which has billions of years to work with, not do the same vis-?-vis its environments?

Some people would reply life is too perfect to have evolved randomly. Shermer would say they are correct. Natural selection culls species from an environment that are least suitable for it and leaves the ones that are most suitable. A mysterious designer is not necessary to explain this process.

Considerations such as these have led even a chief scientist at the Vatican to lambaste intelligent design as "not science." So keeping intelligent design from science texts and lectures would seem axiomatic.

[Jason Vines]

I have posted my fifth editorial as a screed: "Chafee for Senate."

[Jason Vines]

My sixth editorial could have been about anything I wanted. I chose to write about Bob Woodward's new book, State of Denial.

The editorial is titled, "Ship of State With No Helmsman."

President George W. Bush, who would channel the legends of Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, instead carries the ignomies of Presidents John Tyler and Lyndon Johnson.

This would be hilariously ironic in a movie. In real life, what the pretensions and realities of Bush have wrought is tragically sad. State of Denial, the new book from iconic journalist Bob Woodward, illustrates many of the failings of Bush's leadership.

Bush's mismanagement of Iraq began with his direction of the National Security Council. Such direction, as State of Denial reveals, did not exist. Bush did nothing to balance the monumental egos of NSC principals Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, CIA Director George Tenet, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Secretary of State Colin Powell. The President allowed them to fight over bureaucratic turf, to the extent of Rumsfeld withholding national security information from the others. And Bush did not demand the NSC principals work together to deliver clear and consistent recommendations to him. Consequently, the very top of the foreign policy apparatus could provide American operators only disjointed guidance, without anyone bearing obvious responsibility for it.

The NSC's policy chaos spread to Iraq. The government agencies could not agree on a single chain of command for rebuilding Iraq, so multiple lines of responsibility ran through the American personnel in the country. This guaranteed incompetence, for, as Woodward indicates, multiple people being responsible meant no one could be.

Absence of coherent and sensible leadership from the Bush administration led General John Abizaid, who succeeded General Tommy Franks as Commander-in-Chief of Central Command, to remark, "These bastards in Washington have no idea what they're doing."

If a president has uncertain command of a subject, then he should delegate authority to other individuals more knowledgeable than he. But he must not stop being president!

[Jason Vines]

My seventh editorial, in which I had to use statistics, is called "The Other Misguided War."

"The War on Drugs is a failure." So proclaims Walter Cronkite, the Most Trusted Man in America.

President Richard M. Nixon launched the War on Drugs in the 1970's with the noble purpose of reducing crime throughout the country. But, more than 30 years later, the United States must admit the Drug War hasn't worked as it intended. Prohibition of various drugs has increased and not decreased criminal activity.

Because America's crusade against drugs has failed to achieve its objective, it should end. Rather than continuing to waste $40 billion a year on the Drug War, by the tally of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the country should legalize all drugs now.

"Wait a minute!" a proponent of the War on Drugs might interject. "Violent crime has been decreasing over the past decade-and-a-half. Certainly, that is due in part to the War on Drugs."

Facts and logic prove this objector wrong. According to FBI Uniform Crime Reports and US Census information, the homicide rate in the United States rose from 7 per 100,000 people to 9.7 during the Prohibition Era from 1920 to 1933. After the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, the murder rate fell again, reaching a low of 5 in the 1950's. In the 1960's, the homicide rate crept up to nearly 7, but then it skyrocketed with the advent of the Drug War, reaching 8, 9, and 10 for the first time since the 1920's and the 1930's.

The homicide rate definitely lowered from those abysmal heights throughout the 1990's and into the 21st century, with the homicide rate at 5.6 in the latest FBI Uniform Crime Report. Concurrently, however, the United States embraced tougher sentencing guidelines, placed more police officers onto city streets, and implemented more gun control laws. These are more likely explanations for the drop in murder rates than the War on Drugs is, or else the decline would have started in the 1970's instead of the 1990's. But for the War on Drugs, the homicide rate might be lower still.

That might seem irrational, but consider: The War on Drugs ratchets up the prices of drugs far beyond what they would be under normal laws of supply and demand. Profit motive encourages criminal organizations to traffic in drugs. This trafficking yields the mobsters and gangsters $400 billion annually, the United Nations indicates, equivalent to 8 percent of global commerce. And the thugs who reap this cash defend their market share and fight for more as criminals do, through robbery, assault, extortion, bribery, and murder.

If drugs were legal, their prices would plummet. Also, drugs would be available from sources other than nefarious criminals. The expensive black market in drugs would swiftly vanish, crippling if not eliminating many gangs and cartels. Clouds of violence hanging over many American city streets would consequently dissipate.

This post has been edited by Jason Vines: 23 November 2006 - 03:15 AM

[Bondo]

Jason Vines, on Nov 17 2006, 10:57 AM, said:

My seventh editorial, in which I had to use statistics, is called "The Other Misguided War."

You want to cut and run from the war on drugs! We only lose if we quit. On the other hand... if we cut and run from the WoD we also deal the terrorists a thumpin because--as the US Govt tells us-- every time you buy pot the terrorists win.

Quote

Also, drugs would be available from sources other than nefarious criminals. The expensive black market in drugs would swiftly vanish, crippling if not eliminating many gangs and cartels.

Yup. With legalization, the only people who win are the shareholders of Walgreens.

Who wants cheap imported marijuana from Canada!

[Jason Vines]

My last assignment of the semester for the Editorial & Persuasive Writing class was a three-part editorial series. I chose the War on Drugs once more as my topic for the series.

The first part of the series concentrated on the ineffectiveness of the Drug War.

President Richard M. Nixon launched America's struggle against drugs in 1973. President Ronald Reagan intensified that struggle into a war in 1981. President after president since then has continued that War on Drugs.

In the 30 years since the country's anti-drug crusade began, has it effectively curtailed drug consumption? Has it, as Nixon hoped, lowered crime? No and no. Today and tomorrow, we will explain those answers respectively. And Sunday we will present an alternative course to the War on Drugs.

Today, we call the War on Drugs ineffective. A November report from the Bureau of Justice Statistics makes this determination easy: A historical record of two million people sits behind bars in the United States. Many of these prisoners are serving time for drug offenses; drug crimes have driven 49 percent of prisoner population growth. Indeed, public policy specialist Jonathan P. Caulkins and criminologist Peter Reuter say drug offenders comprise 500,000 individuals in prison. That number, they maintain, surpasses the total prison population of Western Europe and the pre-Hurricane Katrina population of New Orleans.

Concurrently, as the Office of National Drug Control Policy indicates, the United States spends $40 billion a year?16 percent of the total law enforcement budget of the nation?prosecuting the War on Drugs.

All this imprisonment and spending has achieved little. The United States still, pronounces Reuter, "has a drug problem more severe than that of any other rich Western society." Whereas Iyana Kuziemko and Steven D. Levitt find cocaine prices are 5 to 15 higher since 1985 because of drug enforcement than they would be otherwise, cocaine and heroine prices have still dropped 80 percent from 1980 to 2002.

Meanwhile, the 2005 National Survey on Drug Use and Health shows 35 million Americans at or above 12-years-old used an illegal drug over the year before the survey. Additionally, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration proclaims 57 percent of the American people say marijuana is simple to buy; a greater amount of high school seniors, 88.5 percent, agree. And 48 percent of high school seniors report they could easily obtain powdered cocaine.

Amazingly, the United States government has routinely declared victory in the War on Drugs. But victory does not describe steady illegal drug usage rates even as more and more drug offenders rot in jail. Victory does not describe plummeting illegal drug prices even as more and more taxpayer dollars pour into enforcement. And victory does not describe the United States experiencing more drug problems than any other developed Western country.

At best, the War on Drugs has reached stalemate, like that in the trenches of Europe during much of World War I.

[Sim]

Nice essay, straight to the point as usual.

And many interesting facts, which make the idea of decriminalizing at least certain drugs or drug-related offenses an interesting idea.

Afterall, the Netherlands have not collapsed after the legalization of soft drugs; maybe I should dig up some statistics on that case, would be interesting to see if these measures have indeed lowered their criminality problems.

[Jason Vines]

The second part of my Drug War series focuses on crime. (This is a bit weak, because I was racing against the clock--I wrote the second part last--but it still makes good points, IMO.)

Crystal methamphetamines are racing to the East Coast from the West and the Midwest, the Florida Times-Union reports today, and crime has been following in meth's wake.

News such as this would persuade many individuals America should intensify the War on Drugs. Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, we take a different view. On Friday, we demonstrated the inefficacy of the War on Drugs. On Sunday, we will explore an alternative to that War. On Saturday, today, we look at how the War on Drugs affects crime.

Media reports constantly link drugs and crime, so this would appear counterintuitive: The War on Drugs increases crime and ending that War would lower it.

But most drug crimes arise because of difficulties with transportation and sale, according to public policy expert Jonathan P. Caulkins and criminologist Peter Reuter. The crime that has accompanied the spread of meth supports that contention: As the Florida Times-Union indicates, many of the meth criminals act to fund their habit.

The War on Drugs has made them expensive: Reuter says an amount of marijuana equal to a $0.10 cigarette would cost $5. Other illegal drugs cost many times more, with heroin, for example, costing $5,000 an ounce. For comparison, an ounce of gold costs $400.

At these prices, many addicts must plunder and rob to support their habits. And many gangsters and other criminals leap at the opportunity to make substantial profits. Absent the War on Drugs, crime would not be necessary for many people to afford their fix. And black market thugs would lose opportunities for profit and incentives for crime.

[Sim]

I agree with your proposition to decriminalize so called "soft drugs" any time -- in these cases, the bad sides of a ban seem to easily outweigh the positive effect of making these drugs less available and thus protecting the health of potential consumers.

However, I'm not sure hard drugs, such as highly-addictive opiates as heroin, should be legalized. There might be the danger that a decriminalization would encourage even many more people to try them, who then get addicted and not only destroying their health, but also burden the economy and health sector.

To borrow from Frederic Bastiat: What you do see are the flaws of a hard drug criminalization -- what you do not see is the magnitude of the drug problem in the case of decriminalization, which may even be much more severe.

However, I do believe there should be more efforts of preventive measures against drug use, such as better education about the dangers, or so called "fixing galleries" where addicts are under medical surveillance and programs are offered to help them to lay off the drug -- without the fear of being imprisoned.

[Jason Vines]

Here's the last part of my series:

Thirty years of waging the War on Drugs have resulted in failure. Now, on the final day of our series on the War on Drugs, we describe an alternative to that collection of unsuccessful policies.

This alternative: Legalize all drugs. Place them under the same regulations as tobacco and alcohol. Doing so would benefit society more than perpetuating futile policies.

Our position would sound absurd to many people. How could letting people abuse their bodies help society? Would not more drug users commit more crimes? As we established on Friday, however, the War on Drugs has not effectively stopped people from abusing their bodies by using drugs. And, as we discussed on Saturday, ending the Drug War would reduce crime.

Legalizing drugs, in addition, would allow the United States to stop overcrowding its prisons with perpetrators of victimless crimes. Overcrowding has become a serious problem, according to the Department of Justice: State prisons are running between maximum capacity and 15 percent above that, and federal prisons are working at 31 percent over capacity. Releasing drug offenders from jail who committed no other crimes and ceasing to send there more people who harmed no one else would alleviate prison overcrowding.

Legalizing drugs also would decrease the number of people who contract HIV/AIDS. Greater than a third of all sufferers of AIDS acquired their horrible disease by injecting drugs through unclean syringes. To address that issue, a bill has emerged in the New Jersey state legislature to fund a clean syringe exchange program. That is a good idea. But legalizing drugs everywhere would ensure the availability all across America of sterile syringes from legitimate sellers, without cost to state or federal governments. That would constitute a significant victory in the fight against AIDS.

Legalizing drugs finally would allow state and federal governments to collect taxes on drug sales, which could fund drug treatment programs for people who wish to enter them.

[Rick]

Quote

Afterall, the Netherlands have not collapsed after the legalization of soft drugs; maybe I should dig up some statistics on that case, would be interesting to see if these measures have indeed lowered their criminality problems.

I live in the Netherlands, so I will try to create an image of how drugs affect criminality here.

Soft drugs are legal here, but hard drugs are not. I haven't heard of any marijuana-related criminality, but I have heard of the problems that hard drugs cause. There are several big "hardcore"-festivals here, these are huge dance events where well-known DJs come to play their "hardcore" music. It's a bit like trance and techno, but more "hardcore" as they call it. This is where the most hard drugs are being sold, there are usually several dealers around these festivals who sell heroin and xtc. Especially the latter is being sold a lot. I haven't been to these festivals simply because I don't like the music, and because I don't want to get deaf yet, but some of my friends do and I've heard stories about them not daring to use the bathrooms set up there because there could be heroin users there (I don't know whether they are troublesome or not, maybe my friend was just a chicken).

But regarding soft drugs, because marijuana is legal here, it's not THAT expensive anymore. I guess that's why there aren't that many people resorting to criminality to be able to pay for it. Whenever I walk through the largest park in Nijmegen (the city up north of where I live, I go there a lot for school and a lot of my friends live there) I see that people using marijuana are usually sitting in groups on benches or lying on the grass, not causing any trouble or bothering anyone. And because of the fact that marijuana is legal, no one's "dealing" in it anymore. Why would you want to buy it off some mysterious figure if you can get it in almost any random coffeeshop?

There are also several clinics here in the Netherlands, several large ones that is, for people who want to get rid of their drug addiction. Usually these clinics are for multiple purposes, they also harbor depressive people and alcoholics.

I don't think that soft drugs affect criminality - not to sound racist or discriminating, but there's a higher percentage of badly educated foreigners committing crimes here than drug addicts who do, just to give an example.