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With that, do you think you deserve any charity at any point hereafter, or would I be justified in writing you off as a two-bit leftist crank?
Tone that down, yo. Yes, the logical leap they're making is questionable, but that isn't justification for this kind of antagonism.
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If you wish the end (of drug free world) you must wish the means. There is no third way.
If being skeptical about war on drugs narrative makes me "leftist", so be it.
BTW, happy new year to you, hopefully it will be better than this one.
This fictional dialogue sounds absurd, because you are not engaging the actual arguments for drug war and penal system in general. Here, check out this one instead.
Now, you might of course dispute the effectiveness of the prevention effect, or argue that it is wrong to sacrifice someone to serve as an example, even if it will prevent great amounts of suffering, but if you prefer to insist that it is just about pure sadism, and there is nothing more to it. instead of engaging the argument, you might as well go back to Reddit.
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Claims that one's outgroup is motivated by sadism instead of whatever they claim their motives are should be a warning sign about the state of one's epistimological soul, as there are many more occasions where one wants to believe it than when it is actually true.
My outgroup...
Who is the outgroup here?
1/People who support war on drugs?
Official purpose of this enterprise is protecting life and health (one of original purposes more than century ago when WOD began was to stop race mixing, this had been, for some reason, dropped).
Now, does it work? It does not seem to work. After century of war, drugs are more plentiful and more dangerous than ever, drug fueled violence and death is higher than ever all over the world, drug powered organized crime groups, bot state and non state, are more wealthy, powerful and influential than ever.
Reasonable people would reconsider their premise, reasonable people would ask: maybe we are doing something wrong? And people who do not want to reconsider, people who want to continue the course - there can be some doubt about their real motives.
2/People who support prisons, especially American prisons as they currently exist?
Official purpose of prisons is to make prisoners into better people, turn them into good law abiding citizens.
This is obviously not happening. Now, people who know well what is going on inside and heartily approve of it, people who love witty prison rape jokes? There is absolutely no doubt possible what motivates them.
Try 1914, with the Harrison Narcotics Act.
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Official primary purpose of prisons is to keep criminals out of public and keep them from doing various crimes against the non-criminals. Prisons would look very different if their official primary purpose were rehabilitation.
Official secondary purpose is to turn criminals into non-criminals, and it would take a lot more money to do that. Would it be worth it? Depends on efficacy of methods used. Study which prisons worldwide release good people at end of sentence, which ones release recidivists. Copy the formers’ methods, not the latter… but correct for confounding factors! Note prison demographics of “best” prisons: all factors and mixes/combos of factors, regardless of whose biases they affirm.
Also remember that prison gangs basically run America’s criminal underworld. Correct for that.
Thought you were going to link this piece from our own Kulak.
I would have if I could have found it. That’s actually the piece I was thinking of.
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