September 7, 2006 Issue

Conservative Republicans have long railed against government intrusion on our individual freedoms. Accepting personal responsibility for our actions is also a tenet of conservative beliefs. Fiscal responsibility, replete with the recurring pledge of “no new taxes,” is a hallmark of the Republican Party. Well, enough already.

The conservative National Rifle Association would have you believe you don’t just have the right to own a handgun, you have a duty to carry one at all times. A recent study comparing the rather bucolic city of Seattle with Vancouver, a similar sized city in Canada, was enlightening. Seattle, far from one of our more violent cities, had nearly 500 deaths associated with handguns in one calendar year. Vancouver, where handguns are prohibited, had seven. The argument that handguns protect citizens against criminals does not work anymore. When does your right to own a handgun collide with my right to stay alive? You owning a handgun puts both of our lives in danger.

Conservatives aren’t comfortable with our citizens making the rather personal decision regarding living arrangements. They want the government to make laws and change our constitution to ban same sex marriage. Homosexuality can’t be swept under the carpet anymore. Gays have come out of the closet and nailed the door shut. The states that are most concerned about gay marriage (states like Alabama and Kansas) have a higher rate of failed traditional marriages than liberal states like Massachusetts and California.

Conservatives want tougher drug laws and more “law and order.” Minimum-mandatory sentencing and unequal enforcement of existing laws have decimated the black community. Guidelines for possession of crack cocaine and powdered cocaine are ridiculous. A mother whose son is in prison for “conspiracy” to possess crack cocaine recently asked me: “Why is there a difference in the penalties for crack and for regular cocaine? A chicken, whether it’s fried or grilled or broiled is still a chicken. It should be the same for cocaine.” The simple answer appears to be that whites prefer powdered cocaine, and blacks use crack cocaine more.

Why can’t we agree to end the charade involving marijuana? If someone wants to use marijuana in the comfort of their own home, why should the government care? If they want to grow enough marijuana to supply themselves, who cares? In regard to any victimless crime, who cares?

Government has no business regulating the sale of alcohol beyond trying to keep it out of the hands of minors. Santa Rosa county, which until recently banned the sale of liquor and wine, had a higher DUI rate than the more populous counties of Okaloosa and Walton. College towns across the country have their hands full trying to keep students under the age of 21 from drinking. Talk about a tough battle. Americans who are old enough to be sent to die in Iraq aren’t old enough to have a beer. There are industries now that create and sell fake IDs. That’s just what we need in this age of illegal immigrants and terrorists. We have also created a generation of Americans who rather routinely break laws regarding alcohol and marijuana. It is more difficult to enforce all laws when some of them are made to be broken.

What about personal responsibility in our military? Everyone knows our soldiers are expected to follow orders. But this war seems to be increasingly left in the hands of the National Guard. The citizens in the National Guard are aware that fighting in a war is a possibility. In reality though, what most of them expected was to be helping in real national emergencies, like floods and fires and civil unrest. The civil war in the streets of Baghdad was not a possibility most enlistees in the National Guard entertained. Our soldiers are becoming more and more disillusioned with this war and their goals have changed from liberating a country full of mysterious people to getting their asses home alive.

It is in the interest of fiscal responsibility and sheer common sense that this war will soon be over. Almost as many American soldiers have been killed in Iraq as were killed on 9/11 and 20,000 soldiers have come home maimed and broken. Tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians have been killed and many more left homeless. The world is a more dangerous place not in spite of this sick war, but because of it.

The main reason the war won’t last forever is an old-fashioned one. Most of us know, through sort of a homegrown fiscal lesson, that we can’t have everything we want. The Bush administration wanted this war desperately. It has now lasted longer than it took Franklin Delano Roosevelt to win World War II. It has become clear to the majority of Americans that we can’t afford to stay in the Middle East. We can’t afford the loss of our people. We can’t afford the moral outrage the rest of the world holds for us. We can’t afford to enrage and politicize the entire Muslim world. And finally, we just can’t afford it. We don’t have the money to waste on a lost cause. The fiscally responsible Republicans are taking us on a course of sheer economic disaster. And for that, in the polls and at the voting booths, they should be held personally responsible. Finally.

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