Remember guys, the Government is there to serve you, and without them, we'd have chaos! The little-told story of how the U.S. government poisoned alcohol during Prohibition. - By Deborah Blum - Slate Magazine It's funny. Prohibition was one of the largest Governmental blunders in the history of the United States, but people never learn about that. Because of Prohibition, non-violent criminals were locked up (for alcohol-related 'crimes), and were exposed to hard-time criminals, and they learned their lessons from the pros. That's why the 1920's/30's were infamous for bank-robbers. Just look at John_Dillinger. But after learning that the Federal Government explicitly poisoned Americans... is... dumbfounding. Not only did the Government create criminals, they explicitly murdered non-violent 'criminals'. Remember guys, the Government is watching out for you!
B-but, people are stupid and evil, that's the we need people to watchover other people, because a magic wizard somehow makes the people in the government not stupid and evil.
This is the exact reason I have this... Ⓐ ...tattooed on my body. Government has failed, is failing, and will forever fail.
Pretty much every weekend I shroom it up I can see it. Fucking Morpheus didn't tell him about the third pill he could have swallowed. EDIT: I don't mean every weekend I shroom it up I watch the movie. I see the actual thing.
Yeah, that's a head scratcher... *Pours shot of Hennessy* I actually read something about that in high school, (not how they poisoned alcohol, but the accounts of prohibition) all it did was make me appreciate folks like Dillinger and Ma Barker.
I guess I could be considered a government appeaser, even though I feel they do more harm than good I feel I get a pretty decent deal for my tax dollars and am not in a position to really compete in a true anarchy - Which I would ideally like to see. I like that I can fight to make the changes in government that I want. I don't like that I don't have a snowballs chance in Hell against corporations or rich fuckheads. My thoughts on prohibition: I'm not religious but even God fucked it up and he had 2 people to watch over.
I don't see anything wrong with the alcohol thing They didn't take an eyedropper and put poison in people's highballs...they changed the formula of industrial alcohol that people stole and then mixed into their moonshine Is it philosophically different than putting emetics in cough syrup? If you're breaking the law to get high, you take your chances I don't agree with prohibition and more power to anyone who's fighting against it, but if the government or industry has a strategy to help enforce their law, do you expect them not to wield it?
This thread is a joke. I don't think anyone here is going to argue that the US government hasn't committed a lot of atrocities. But you can't say "Look at this awful thing the government did!" and then conclude that all government forever always is bad. Jesus...
Of course not, the problem is the means to their end. The state almost always acts without thought to the unintended consequences of their actions. The same goes for the bleeding hearts out there; their intentions are pure but they stupidly support means inconducive to their ends.
True, but can you say "Look at these awful things the government has always done" and then conclude that government is inherently bad? Or do you just spend your life fighting these facts and try to reform the state by expanding it?
Define "bad". I agree that government is "bad" in the sense that it sometimes makes bad decisions, but I think it's a necessary "evil". I think about how a problem will best be solved?
Meh. Standard. lol, jk. No it's not "right" just...doesn't surprise me. the gov't isn't some uncorrectable holy entity. its just people, trying to get shit done and makes their monies.
Which is one of the problems I have with government. Public officials should be held to a higher standard than regular citizens.
One thing that's gone unsaid in this thread is that the gross majority of people support some form of government. Anarchists are the huge minority. Therefore, they can't expect the state to shrivel up and die just for them while everyone else is standing around mouth agape, wondering how the hell they're going to survive. But yes, the government has once again been demonstrated to be corrupt, cruel and very possibly evil. Bear in mind this WAS 70 or 80 years ago and the zeitgeist was a bit different - if a government did that to a consumer product today, there'd be enormous, enormous outrage... providing people actually knew about it. Funny thing is, they do this sort of shit to weed, coca plants etc, spraying crops with what amounts to poison as part of the 'War on Drugs'. Hmmm... The government isn't instrinsically, always and unfallibly evil. That's essentially saying that people are instrinsically, always and unfallibly evil, which I don't take as even slightly close to the truth - the majority of people are far more nice, good, pleasant etc than evil. Their motivations may be 'selfish' and thus 'evil', but they may not be too... there's no universal judgement that can be made. It seems the problem often lies in those who inherit a particular idea. Example, the United States. The founding fathers had their wonderful, classical liberal ideas and whatnot... and gradually, and surely, this has changed dramatically to what we have today. The successors of those who make ideas often fail to properly understand the concepts of the initial bright spark, and they make mistakes that presumably the original bright spark wouldn't of.
I don't know how facetious this post is because I just got back from an art gallery downtown where I smoked a lot and drank a lot of wild turkey, but I mean, yeah. I think so. If government provides the best solution, I favor government, and if a private/local/etc solution works better than the state, by all means. Really, it's all about a personal definition of "best". It's easy to categorize people into a label but in doing so the individual opinions get marginalized and the conversation becomes too ideological as opposed to practical, which I fear is the unfortunate reality of internet discussion.