Aside: I'd be curious to know what I'm losing when I read Baudelaire in English. I have enough passing French knowledge to read and decode him in the original, but this is merely a step before actual comprehension, which must take place for me in English. I've always wondered what I'm missing.
I wouldn't try to lay claim to the mantle of faith, certainly not as Kierkegaard defines it.
I felt rather that Kierkegaard was the best "next step" for those of us who do not have faith. The kind of militant atheism popular with my cohort is such a dead-end from a philosophical standpoint...Kierkegaard was a way for a nonbeliever to reopen the conversation with the faithful, a radical reconception of faith as an end itself rather than a means to an end.
Undoubtedly I have all kinds of misconceptions about what Kierkegaard actually meant (I'm always finding new ways to correct myself when I return to his work), but the central victory he had over me was to force me to reassess the value of faith, and to at least consider it as an aspiration (if only on good days.)
And of course, he also happens to be a particularly gifted and clever writer. Come for the ideas, stay for the prose.
I have to vehemently disagree with this. Maybe I'm just not old enough to see it yet, but for me Kierkegaard has only gotten better with time. I've certainly had the semitragic experience of feeling that works I once thought were great have diminished over time, but none of Kierkegaard's books are among them.
I went to a "great books" school and thus had many intense experiences with books, but I can safely say that none changed my life as much as Fear and Trembling. I still return to it regularly; it radically changed my perspective on religion and matters of spirit.
@cfpete, At every level of government it is much easier to move Democrats than Republicans on the issue. Democrats are still way behind the curve from a common sense perspective, but barring a hostile takeover of the GOP by libertarian leaning conservatives, Dems are the anti-prohibition party of the future.
@Mike Farmer, Well, for the sake of argument, let's assume that the leadership really only cares about the Cordoba House. They still must be aware of the connection between that dispute and the wider national issue. It's not just about two other specific protests; as the link below ought to illustrate, state and national reps are speaking out against Islam qua Islam. I can think of at least three cases and I'll provide links if you want. Talkingpointsmemo has also been covering this issue just about daily and would have more.
In any case, for me the whole hypothetical is mute. As I made clear in my posts above, it seems obvious to me that drawing a spurious identity between Islam and al Qaeda even in Cordoba's case is wrong on the facts, tactics, politics, and morals.
@Mike Farmer, This occurred to me as well, as the Times piece had only three instances (although they are, geographically, way spread out.) I wondered if maybe it was time for Jack Shafer to do a more political "bogus trend" piece.
But honestly, with most of the Republican leadership pushing this, and most Democrats refusing to speak out against it - not to mention the ADL, of all people, getting involved - I do think it merits a second look as a growing wave of something.
I certainly hope that it's not, that this is just media sensationalizing a blip on our cultural radar. But you have to admit that the extent to which the leaders of a supposedly law-abiding republic are willing to indulge this gives pause.
@Robert Cheeks, Also, in the 20 or so words you were able to spare for your sanctimonious comment, I notice you failed to respond to any of the substance I had written. Not that I have hope that you've got much of a response for any of it, but just pointing it out.
@Robert Cheeks, I have many friends and family living in Israel, and also lived in Israel myself, where the bases for many of these 'comments' (scare quotes around this? have we fallen so far?) were formed and nurtured.
Among my Israeli friends, this nasty business of equating Islam with al-Qaeda would, I assure you, be laughed out of the room by the overwhelming majority. One thing the far right and far left have in common when it comes to Israel is the convenient ability to forget all about the huge number of Israeli Arabs (most of them Muslim) who live peacefully in Israel, and serve in the IDF. Your ship of fools is less crowded than you'd like, I'm afraid.
Of course in Israel, just as in the US, I'm certain you could find people who agree with you. But then, Israelis average about one war every decade with radical Islamists, which, though it does not entitle them to the racism of your attitude, at least perhaps makes it understandable. But what's your excuse?
With the ADL, all you need to know is that Abe Foxman calls the shots there. If you're not familiar with his work, a quick Google search should speak volumes. On the salsa scale of culture warriors, he's just the "medium" to FOX News's "picante", and I guess the only reason he hasn't really turned up the heat is that he still has to appear at least nominally to be doing his job.
Some links that may be of interest to you:
-Matt Yglesias had an editorial in the Post today chalking up this resurgence to the economy. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/06/AR2010080602665.html I think that's about 50% of your answer.
- The other 50% was mentioned above, namely the unspoken assumption that as long as Republicans are in power, no one is going to give Islam a free ride. This assumption exists for both liberals and conservatives, I think, with the major difference being that only conservatives see this as a net positive.
In that respect I suppose we were lucky to have Bush as a president, if we had to have a Republican. At least he spoke out on behalf of American Muslims. Hence Jeff Goldberg's appeal today: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/08/a-task-for-george-w-bush/61133/
#1: Attempting to define religious worshipers solely through their primary text is like reviewing a neuroscience textbook in preparation for a first date. Try reading the second and third books of the Hebrew bible, and then constructing a portrait of an American Jew. How accurate does it look?
Religions are capable of (and always do) evolve over time. It is unfair, shortsighted, and deeply hypocritical to demand that a book written in wartime centuries ago somehow comply with 21st century liberal values. And it is simply preposterous to contend that anyone subscribing to that book in any form must subscribe to all of it.
#2: I suspect many of the loudest, dumbest anti-Jihad jihadis simply don't understand how large Islam is, and mistake the religious demographic makeup of the US as being representative of the entire world.
Folks, Muslims are nearly 25% of the WORLD population. That's well over 1 billion people. How do Americans intend to deal with a "death cult" of that size? And how can those in this thread claiming that Islam itself is a serious threat to the US explain how we have not already been conquered by such a massive, blood-thirsty army?
Your version of Islam simply does not correspond to reality. If Islam were a death cult that had attracted so many adherents, the world would be in a state of total, abject chaos.
And if your version of Islam were correct, and not a gross and inflammatory series of generalizations, the notion that a mere 300 million Americans could fight back against such a force would itself be laughable. We were better off withdrawing our troops, sealing the borders, and erecting long walls to save ourselves from the coming Caliphate.
But thankfully, that version of Islam is not true, and not even close to true, as the overall state of the world, and the US in particular, easily illustrates.
@Will, I think it must depend where you come from. I was a camp counselor at a Jewish summer camp in northeast Georgia for about 6 years, and we drew kids from all over the southeast. The kids from south Florida probably didn't even know what the word 'antisemitism' meant. But in Alabama, Texas, Missouri, Mississippi, Georgia, etc., if you came from a town that was 5 figures or fewer in size, you probably had a pretty good idea. Then again, maybe it skews more toward young people - high schoolers are vicious no matter who you are.
Then there's questions of your personal background and the circles you run in. My own grandparents on the Christian side of my family were antisemitic as hell, so again maybe I've got a bias there.
It has always fascinated me how unique the situation of Jews in the US is. I teach a 4th grade Sunday school at my Temple, and it alternately pleases me and breaks my heart how utterly my students feel that their place in society is a 100% given. Part of that is their youth, but for many of them their parents feel the same way.
It's different in the city than it was for me growing up, but that's just a hair's breadth of difference compared to my own grandparents. I recently attended my fiancee's cousin's bat mitzvah at a country club in at Atlanta, where my grandparents have lived most of their lives. When they were in their prime, you could forget about having a bat mitzvah at this place -- Jews weren't even allowed in the door. When I told them where we were going, they were gobsmacked. They are much more aware of how tenuous these changes are; they remember when it was different.
I don't look a gift horse in the mouth and I don't like it when it seems like other people are just looking for a reason to complain or disagree, but I wonder whether the triumphant spirit in which these comments (and others like them around the web) are written isn't premature.
@Rufus, This seems like wishful thinking a bit. Antisemitism in the polite company of our public sphere was retired in the 50s, but I bet you'd be hard-pressed to find a Jew who doesn't live in a major metropolitan area who has not experienced some very real, in-your-face antisemitism in his life. Although I may be biased on this point, having grown up in the south and from a long line of southern Jews.
These guys got their start about 20 minutes outside my hometown in NC, and I used to go out and catch them playing little radio shows at some of the colleges and clubs around the city. It's been very gratifying to watch them rise, especially considering what nice people they are in person.
I've seen one of these before on the 70 northbound: http://www.americasmartshop.com/images/ma02.jpg
Luckily, I can't think of a single marijuana user in the city who would care what a "conservatively dressed" guy on the subway thinks about marijuana use one way or the other. Especially one who feels the need to assure us all that he wouldn't turn someone in for a victimless and harmless "crime".
@Sam M, Care to demonstrate the part about this that is a "debate"? It looks to me like one guy giving a book review with many debatable points, and then a couple of his colleagues questioning not those debatable points but rather his conduct and motives. That sounds like the opposite of a debate, to me. I think it's called demagoguery.
I don't read the Corner hardly ever (how's that for closure?) and couldn't care less what these people have to say, but it is certainly humorous that in a post on epistemic closure, their rebuttals have succeeded in proving the point.
@Max Socol, Even as I wrote the sentence about Calderon I thought "geez, I really don't know much about electoral politics in Mexico. Maybe I should google...?" Then I remembered I'm a no-account blogger and just made it up. Thanks for the correction.
I'm sure the cartels will find other ways to make money. The question for me is whether they'll be able to find ways to make as much money. Based on the numbers that I have seen, I think demand for cocaine and other hard drugs would need to go way up in the US to even come close to replacing the lost revenue from pot, and I just don't see that happening. Americans have a long and close relationship with marijuana that doesn't hold for other drugs (aside from alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine). There have been and always will be spikes in usage of those other drugs, but marijuana is a phenomenon unto itself.
As for non-narcotic alternatives -- piracy, human trafficking, counterfeiting, whatever -- I don't see it, either. I know cartels already do all this stuff, but is there room for much expansion in any of these areas? They are all either high risk or low reward, not nearly as economic as drugs. I also wonder whether cartels making less money (post-marijuana legalization) would be able to expand any more than they already have. The most powerful among them already own sizable tracts of Mexican territory, not to mention government and military officials on both sides of the border. If they were able to handle the logistics of expanding these operations, don't you think they already would have?
For me, I have to do the simpler math. The cartels are tearing Mexico to pieces, and beginning to do the same to the southwestern US. We have a button we can push that will -- at least temporarily -- put a stop to this process, in addition to repairing a laundry list of other social ills. I don't think worries that the cartels will rebound have much of a role in that decision -- they are too speculative, and the cartels already too dangerous.
@Roque Nuevo,
Yeah, not sure where you were getting the idea that I was suggesting legalization of pot in Mexico. I am definitely talking about legalization in the US, and I'm certain that it would follow shortly in Mexico. (Probably not until after Calderon is defeated, but that can't be too far off.)
I also wasn't saying that cartels aren't growing plenty of pot in Mexico, and I do know that some of it does get smuggled. I'm just assuming that I am working with a low-information audience (cartels make most of their money on coke? Jesus...) and trying to shock them into reality. Pointing out that cartels are growing on US soil with impunity usually does that.
You have the rest of the formula right. Legalizing pot lowers prices and channels business to legit grow operations in the western US. The bottom drops out of the single largest source of funding for cartels, and suddenly instead of rolling in armor plated humvees shooting AK's, scaring the army, they're back to a bag of handguns and a couple of train tickets to split between them.
@Mopey Duns,
"While marijuana is big (billions of dollars big) business, and violent, the Mexican cartels are still mostly about cocaine distribution."
This is 100% false.
Cartels earn nearly 70% of their profits from marijuana alone. Please read that sentence again.
In the 80's cartels may have been more deeply invested in the cocaine trade, but since production networks in Colombia were smashed, they have reformed in Mexico and now deal almost exclusively in marijuana. And by the way, they don't grow pot in Mexico and smuggle it. They grow it right here in the States, in national forests and other public lands. Much easier than smuggling.
If this is news to you, you have no business whatever waxing on about the perils of drug legalization. Sorry.
It doesn't take an economics degree to connect the dots: legalizing marijuana alone would completely dismantle smaller cartels, and cripple the capacity for violence of the major players.
sometimes I forget that Stephens found a place at the WSJ, and then something like this reminds me and I'm gobsmacked all over again. This guy almost destroyed the Jerusalem Post, and no one I met there had anything nice to say about him. It's a real strike against WSJ's credibility that they continue to employ him.
(Fun factoid: during his tenure running the Post, the paper gave person of the year to Paul Wolfowitz. Despite reminders to Stephens (gentle and otherwise) that the paper was supposed to be Israeli, and not American. Is it possible to be a bigger bag of neocon tools? I doubt it.)
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Which works should be read in the original?”
The bible.
Aside: I'd be curious to know what I'm losing when I read Baudelaire in English. I have enough passing French knowledge to read and decode him in the original, but this is merely a step before actual comprehension, which must take place for me in English. I've always wondered what I'm missing.
On “Kierkegaard Bleg”
I wouldn't try to lay claim to the mantle of faith, certainly not as Kierkegaard defines it.
I felt rather that Kierkegaard was the best "next step" for those of us who do not have faith. The kind of militant atheism popular with my cohort is such a dead-end from a philosophical standpoint...Kierkegaard was a way for a nonbeliever to reopen the conversation with the faithful, a radical reconception of faith as an end itself rather than a means to an end.
Undoubtedly I have all kinds of misconceptions about what Kierkegaard actually meant (I'm always finding new ways to correct myself when I return to his work), but the central victory he had over me was to force me to reassess the value of faith, and to at least consider it as an aspiration (if only on good days.)
And of course, he also happens to be a particularly gifted and clever writer. Come for the ideas, stay for the prose.
"
I have to vehemently disagree with this. Maybe I'm just not old enough to see it yet, but for me Kierkegaard has only gotten better with time. I've certainly had the semitragic experience of feeling that works I once thought were great have diminished over time, but none of Kierkegaard's books are among them.
"
I went to a "great books" school and thus had many intense experiences with books, but I can safely say that none changed my life as much as Fear and Trembling. I still return to it regularly; it radically changed my perspective on religion and matters of spirit.
On “National Review and Prop 19”
@cfpete, At every level of government it is much easier to move Democrats than Republicans on the issue. Democrats are still way behind the curve from a common sense perspective, but barring a hostile takeover of the GOP by libertarian leaning conservatives, Dems are the anti-prohibition party of the future.
On “A Purposeful Education”
thanks for this, I really enjoyed it. I've often struggled to explain why I enjoyed high school so much, and you hit the nail on the head.
On “Short answer: Yes”
@Max Socol, That would be "moot", not "mute".
"
@Mike Farmer, Well, for the sake of argument, let's assume that the leadership really only cares about the Cordoba House. They still must be aware of the connection between that dispute and the wider national issue. It's not just about two other specific protests; as the link below ought to illustrate, state and national reps are speaking out against Islam qua Islam. I can think of at least three cases and I'll provide links if you want. Talkingpointsmemo has also been covering this issue just about daily and would have more.
In any case, for me the whole hypothetical is mute. As I made clear in my posts above, it seems obvious to me that drawing a spurious identity between Islam and al Qaeda even in Cordoba's case is wrong on the facts, tactics, politics, and morals.
"
@Mike Farmer, This occurred to me as well, as the Times piece had only three instances (although they are, geographically, way spread out.) I wondered if maybe it was time for Jack Shafer to do a more political "bogus trend" piece.
But honestly, with most of the Republican leadership pushing this, and most Democrats refusing to speak out against it - not to mention the ADL, of all people, getting involved - I do think it merits a second look as a growing wave of something.
I certainly hope that it's not, that this is just media sensationalizing a blip on our cultural radar. But you have to admit that the extent to which the leaders of a supposedly law-abiding republic are willing to indulge this gives pause.
"
@Robert Cheeks, Also, in the 20 or so words you were able to spare for your sanctimonious comment, I notice you failed to respond to any of the substance I had written. Not that I have hope that you've got much of a response for any of it, but just pointing it out.
"
@Robert Cheeks, I have many friends and family living in Israel, and also lived in Israel myself, where the bases for many of these 'comments' (scare quotes around this? have we fallen so far?) were formed and nurtured.
Among my Israeli friends, this nasty business of equating Islam with al-Qaeda would, I assure you, be laughed out of the room by the overwhelming majority. One thing the far right and far left have in common when it comes to Israel is the convenient ability to forget all about the huge number of Israeli Arabs (most of them Muslim) who live peacefully in Israel, and serve in the IDF. Your ship of fools is less crowded than you'd like, I'm afraid.
Of course in Israel, just as in the US, I'm certain you could find people who agree with you. But then, Israelis average about one war every decade with radical Islamists, which, though it does not entitle them to the racism of your attitude, at least perhaps makes it understandable. But what's your excuse?
On “The More Important Question is Why”
With the ADL, all you need to know is that Abe Foxman calls the shots there. If you're not familiar with his work, a quick Google search should speak volumes. On the salsa scale of culture warriors, he's just the "medium" to FOX News's "picante", and I guess the only reason he hasn't really turned up the heat is that he still has to appear at least nominally to be doing his job.
Some links that may be of interest to you:
-Matt Yglesias had an editorial in the Post today chalking up this resurgence to the economy. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/06/AR2010080602665.html I think that's about 50% of your answer.
- The other 50% was mentioned above, namely the unspoken assumption that as long as Republicans are in power, no one is going to give Islam a free ride. This assumption exists for both liberals and conservatives, I think, with the major difference being that only conservatives see this as a net positive.
In that respect I suppose we were lucky to have Bush as a president, if we had to have a Republican. At least he spoke out on behalf of American Muslims. Hence Jeff Goldberg's appeal today: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/08/a-task-for-george-w-bush/61133/
On “Short answer: Yes”
#1: Attempting to define religious worshipers solely through their primary text is like reviewing a neuroscience textbook in preparation for a first date. Try reading the second and third books of the Hebrew bible, and then constructing a portrait of an American Jew. How accurate does it look?
Religions are capable of (and always do) evolve over time. It is unfair, shortsighted, and deeply hypocritical to demand that a book written in wartime centuries ago somehow comply with 21st century liberal values. And it is simply preposterous to contend that anyone subscribing to that book in any form must subscribe to all of it.
#2: I suspect many of the loudest, dumbest anti-Jihad jihadis simply don't understand how large Islam is, and mistake the religious demographic makeup of the US as being representative of the entire world.
Folks, Muslims are nearly 25% of the WORLD population. That's well over 1 billion people. How do Americans intend to deal with a "death cult" of that size? And how can those in this thread claiming that Islam itself is a serious threat to the US explain how we have not already been conquered by such a massive, blood-thirsty army?
Your version of Islam simply does not correspond to reality. If Islam were a death cult that had attracted so many adherents, the world would be in a state of total, abject chaos.
And if your version of Islam were correct, and not a gross and inflammatory series of generalizations, the notion that a mere 300 million Americans could fight back against such a force would itself be laughable. We were better off withdrawing our troops, sealing the borders, and erecting long walls to save ourselves from the coming Caliphate.
But thankfully, that version of Islam is not true, and not even close to true, as the overall state of the world, and the US in particular, easily illustrates.
On “As American as Passover”
@Will, I think it must depend where you come from. I was a camp counselor at a Jewish summer camp in northeast Georgia for about 6 years, and we drew kids from all over the southeast. The kids from south Florida probably didn't even know what the word 'antisemitism' meant. But in Alabama, Texas, Missouri, Mississippi, Georgia, etc., if you came from a town that was 5 figures or fewer in size, you probably had a pretty good idea. Then again, maybe it skews more toward young people - high schoolers are vicious no matter who you are.
Then there's questions of your personal background and the circles you run in. My own grandparents on the Christian side of my family were antisemitic as hell, so again maybe I've got a bias there.
"
It has always fascinated me how unique the situation of Jews in the US is. I teach a 4th grade Sunday school at my Temple, and it alternately pleases me and breaks my heart how utterly my students feel that their place in society is a 100% given. Part of that is their youth, but for many of them their parents feel the same way.
It's different in the city than it was for me growing up, but that's just a hair's breadth of difference compared to my own grandparents. I recently attended my fiancee's cousin's bat mitzvah at a country club in at Atlanta, where my grandparents have lived most of their lives. When they were in their prime, you could forget about having a bat mitzvah at this place -- Jews weren't even allowed in the door. When I told them where we were going, they were gobsmacked. They are much more aware of how tenuous these changes are; they remember when it was different.
I don't look a gift horse in the mouth and I don't like it when it seems like other people are just looking for a reason to complain or disagree, but I wonder whether the triumphant spirit in which these comments (and others like them around the web) are written isn't premature.
"
@Rufus, This seems like wishful thinking a bit. Antisemitism in the polite company of our public sphere was retired in the 50s, but I bet you'd be hard-pressed to find a Jew who doesn't live in a major metropolitan area who has not experienced some very real, in-your-face antisemitism in his life. Although I may be biased on this point, having grown up in the south and from a long line of southern Jews.
"
@Roque Nuevo, I think Weiss is too easy and obvious a target for this.
On “Money & Music (and The Avett Brothers)”
These guys got their start about 20 minutes outside my hometown in NC, and I used to go out and catch them playing little radio shows at some of the colleges and clubs around the city. It's been very gratifying to watch them rise, especially considering what nice people they are in person.
On “Pot Culture Watch”
I've seen one of these before on the 70 northbound: http://www.americasmartshop.com/images/ma02.jpg
Luckily, I can't think of a single marijuana user in the city who would care what a "conservatively dressed" guy on the subway thinks about marijuana use one way or the other. Especially one who feels the need to assure us all that he wouldn't turn someone in for a victimless and harmless "crime".
On “No epistemic closure here!”
@Sam M, Care to demonstrate the part about this that is a "debate"? It looks to me like one guy giving a book review with many debatable points, and then a couple of his colleagues questioning not those debatable points but rather his conduct and motives. That sounds like the opposite of a debate, to me. I think it's called demagoguery.
I don't read the Corner hardly ever (how's that for closure?) and couldn't care less what these people have to say, but it is certainly humorous that in a post on epistemic closure, their rebuttals have succeeded in proving the point.
On “A 4/20 Reminder”
@Max Socol, Even as I wrote the sentence about Calderon I thought "geez, I really don't know much about electoral politics in Mexico. Maybe I should google...?" Then I remembered I'm a no-account blogger and just made it up. Thanks for the correction.
I'm sure the cartels will find other ways to make money. The question for me is whether they'll be able to find ways to make as much money. Based on the numbers that I have seen, I think demand for cocaine and other hard drugs would need to go way up in the US to even come close to replacing the lost revenue from pot, and I just don't see that happening. Americans have a long and close relationship with marijuana that doesn't hold for other drugs (aside from alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine). There have been and always will be spikes in usage of those other drugs, but marijuana is a phenomenon unto itself.
As for non-narcotic alternatives -- piracy, human trafficking, counterfeiting, whatever -- I don't see it, either. I know cartels already do all this stuff, but is there room for much expansion in any of these areas? They are all either high risk or low reward, not nearly as economic as drugs. I also wonder whether cartels making less money (post-marijuana legalization) would be able to expand any more than they already have. The most powerful among them already own sizable tracts of Mexican territory, not to mention government and military officials on both sides of the border. If they were able to handle the logistics of expanding these operations, don't you think they already would have?
For me, I have to do the simpler math. The cartels are tearing Mexico to pieces, and beginning to do the same to the southwestern US. We have a button we can push that will -- at least temporarily -- put a stop to this process, in addition to repairing a laundry list of other social ills. I don't think worries that the cartels will rebound have much of a role in that decision -- they are too speculative, and the cartels already too dangerous.
"
@Roque Nuevo,
Yeah, not sure where you were getting the idea that I was suggesting legalization of pot in Mexico. I am definitely talking about legalization in the US, and I'm certain that it would follow shortly in Mexico. (Probably not until after Calderon is defeated, but that can't be too far off.)
I also wasn't saying that cartels aren't growing plenty of pot in Mexico, and I do know that some of it does get smuggled. I'm just assuming that I am working with a low-information audience (cartels make most of their money on coke? Jesus...) and trying to shock them into reality. Pointing out that cartels are growing on US soil with impunity usually does that.
You have the rest of the formula right. Legalizing pot lowers prices and channels business to legit grow operations in the western US. The bottom drops out of the single largest source of funding for cartels, and suddenly instead of rolling in armor plated humvees shooting AK's, scaring the army, they're back to a bag of handguns and a couple of train tickets to split between them.
"
@Mopey Duns,
"While marijuana is big (billions of dollars big) business, and violent, the Mexican cartels are still mostly about cocaine distribution."
This is 100% false.
Cartels earn nearly 70% of their profits from marijuana alone. Please read that sentence again.
In the 80's cartels may have been more deeply invested in the cocaine trade, but since production networks in Colombia were smashed, they have reformed in Mexico and now deal almost exclusively in marijuana. And by the way, they don't grow pot in Mexico and smuggle it. They grow it right here in the States, in national forests and other public lands. Much easier than smuggling.
If this is news to you, you have no business whatever waxing on about the perils of drug legalization. Sorry.
It doesn't take an economics degree to connect the dots: legalizing marijuana alone would completely dismantle smaller cartels, and cripple the capacity for violence of the major players.
On “Pornography & Liberty”
@Freddie, do tell
"
sometimes I forget that Stephens found a place at the WSJ, and then something like this reminds me and I'm gobsmacked all over again. This guy almost destroyed the Jerusalem Post, and no one I met there had anything nice to say about him. It's a real strike against WSJ's credibility that they continue to employ him.
(Fun factoid: during his tenure running the Post, the paper gave person of the year to Paul Wolfowitz. Despite reminders to Stephens (gentle and otherwise) that the paper was supposed to be Israeli, and not American. Is it possible to be a bigger bag of neocon tools? I doubt it.)
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.