[Hoot Gibson]

You really think I want to come on here and hear about your finances all the time? I slugged it out in the work a day world too, and I did it in the typically hostile waters of a bunch of guys who wanted to rise in the ranks that were less than flattering when my back was turned, and don't tell me you don't know what I'm talking about.

So, let's get back to it. This idea that you and others keep coming with that people should be allowed to do what they want to do. If that includes drug abuse then that should be legalized, and taxed. We already know it will be impossible to regulate. It's basically the same argument the left makes with regard to abortion rights. People want to be allowed to do what they know is wrong without paying the price for their actions. Murder is wrong, but we simply repackage it under a racey new nomenclature and send it back out there with the backing of liberal activist legislators and judges who, after 230 or so years, suddenly decide it's legal. Drug abuse is a national shame, but the users would have us believe it is the magic elixer of our time and that the 'man' is trying to hold everybody back. It's wrong, but there will always be the rationalizers out threre making ever more convincing arguments that is actually right.

While we disagree philosophically on whether drug use by adults in their own home should be legal or not, I find the proposed legalization of drugs and the so-called "right to choose" wildly at odds with liberals' desire to regulate minute details of our lives in so many more innocuous ways. These self-professed champions of individual rights see no problem telling people that they must purchase healthcare insurance, they must wear seat belts, they must pay for cell phones and a host of other luxuries for the alleged poor American citizens and even illegal aliens, they must only smoke tobacco outside in designated areas (in some cases on their own property), they must obtain government permits for often minor enhancements to their own homes, they must fly flags only of a designated size in designated areas, they must eat only federally approved food, they must take only FDA-approved medicines (even if they are terminally ill), etc., etc., etc....

The irony that so many liberals feel kinship to libertarians, merely because libertarians also believe that adults should be free to ingest or inhale whatever they want is lost on liberals who get off on regulating every facet of our daily lives, except in a very few areas. In those areas, such as the recreational use of drugs, liberals demand the freedom to behave irresponsibly. But they will be the first to demand that everybody else pay for their rehab when they cannot handle the responsibility that comes with such freedom.