“Humphreys thinks the root of “San Francisco’s drug crisis” is “a libertarian, individualistic culture” that since the 19th century has attracted people who yearn “to be free of traditional constraints back East, to reinvent themselves, to escape the small-mindedness of small towns and to find themselves.” While that culture “underlies the city’s entrepreneurialism, artistic energy and tolerance for diversity in all forms,” he says, it “has a downside when it comes to addiction, which thrives in such a cultural milieu.” San Francisco “has long been one of the booziest cities in the country,” he writes, and “heavy use of substances has always been part of how San Francisco defines freedom and the good life.”
Conflating “heavy use of substances” with libertarianism is more than a little strange. Libertarianism focuses on the proper role of government; it does not tell people how they should conduct their private lives, except insofar as their actions impinge on the rights of others.”
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“The actual cause of ever-escalating drug deaths, he avers, is “the libertarian assumption that given freedom and tolerance, everyone will rationally and productively pursue their self-interest,” which “cannot explain why a starving person would, for example, forgo food in exchange for fentanyl or cocaine.”
The assumption that Humphreys describes as “libertarian” is plainly at odds with reality. But libertarianism does not assume that people never make mistakes, never develop bad habits, or never engage in behavior they ultimately regret. It simply argues, for moral and pragmatic reasons, that the possibility of error is not enough to justify using force, which should be reserved for conduct that violates other people’s rights.
Humphreys suggests that decisions regarding psychoactive drugs are a special case because those substances negate the ability to choose. As I explain in Saying Yes, this belief is a tenet of voodoo pharmacology, which posits that drugs take control of people and compel them to act against their own interests.
Survey data, which show that people can and generally do use both legal and illegal drugs without developing life-disrupting habits, contradict that theory. Observational and laboratory research confirms that the way people react to drugs is not pharmacologically determined but highly contingent on the circumstances and incentives they face, as psychologists such as Stanton Peele, Bruce Alexander, and Carl Hart have been pointing out for many years.”
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“”Portugal is in no way a libertarian country,” Humphreys writes. “Rather, it’s a cohesive, communal society in which drug use is culturally frowned upon rather than celebrated as a sign of freedom. When drug-addicted people commit crimes in Portugal, they are sent to a ‘dissuasion committee’ that can apply penalties to those who refuse to seek and stay in addiction treatment. Informally, this is backed up by pressure from family and community for addicted individuals to enter recovery.”
Humphreys is right that Portugal’s approach is not libertarian. While “dissuading” drug users is preferable to arresting, prosecuting, and incarcerating them, it shows little respect for individual autonomy. Humphreys is comfortable with that because he thinks individual autonomy is meaningless in the context of drug use. Hence he thinks San Francisco should “use court authority to mandate addiction treatment more broadly than it currently does.””
“Gorsuch didn’t say that there aren’t problems at the border or that the transition from Title 42 wouldn’t prove challenging. “But the current border crisis is not a COVID crisis,” he wrote. “And courts should not be in the business of perpetuating administrative edicts designed for one emergency only because elected officials have failed to address a different emergency. We are a court of law, not policymakers of last resort.”
Policy makers would be wise to scrap the pandemic-era Title 42 order. It’s accomplished the opposite of what proponents promised, leading to more frequent and less predictable migrant inflows. Since a Title 42 expulsion carries no reentry penalty, repeat crossings roughly quadrupled in 2021 compared to their 2019 rate. Smugglers have taken advantage of repeat crossings by charging migrants more for the inflated number of northward journeys. With asylum largely inaccessible at ports of entry, migrants desperate to enter the country have attempted to cross the border in less surveilled, more dangerous terrain. These things have all contributed to chaotic scenes at the border, providing fodder for immigration restrictionists.”
“massive flight cancelations from are a good reminder of what a raw deal those bailouts were for taxpayers and consumers. Rather than allow the shock of the pandemic to create some needed disruption in the passenger airline industry, Congress chose to prop up a messy status quo.
The $7 billion Southwest received from three COVID relief bills allowed ineffective practices at the airline to persist. Allowing the competitive pressures to more freely do their work might have spurred some productive change within Southwest.”
“Of course, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his administration would contribute to the latest Christmas-themed targeting of drag queens as some existential threat.
The state’s Department of Business and Professional Regulation sent a letter..to the Orlando Philharmonic Plaza Foundation in Orlando, Florida, because their venue was hosting A Drag Queen Christmas, a touring stage production crossing the country that’s been around for eight years.
The letter warns the venue that they have “reason to believe that this drag show is of a sexual nature, involving the exposure or exhibition of sexual organs, simulated sexual activity, and/or the sexualization of children’s stories.” The department says it has “become aware” that the show has been marketed to and attended by children. The agency warns that the drag show may be considered a “public nuisance” if minors are allowed to attend, provided that any of these claims of sexual activity are true. Thus, the venue could have its license revoked. “In short, if you allow children to attend the Drag Fans drag show at your facility,” the letter warns, “you are putting your license in jeopardy.” The letter concludes that if the venue allows minors in at all, “the Department will take any and all actions available to make sure you do not pose a threat to minors in the future.” (Emphasis added.)
Note that this letter doesn’t actually say that there is any nudity or simulated sexual activity at this show, only that the department believes there is. It probably consulted this Twitter thread by Tayler Hansen, who provides images and clips of the show from its stop in Austin, Texas. A Drag Queen Christmas is a pretty raunchy show in the way that’s familiar to anybody who has watched drag performances. But the only “nudity” found in Hansen’s clips and images is a pair of absolutely fake boobs being worn by a drag queen. There is a lot of overtly sexualized behavior and gyrating from people who are not actually naked or having sex.
Essentially, this is a Madonna concert, circa her Blonde Ambition World Tour days. Madonna, of course, is famously beloved by gay men and drag queens in particular for her wild looks and deliberately sexualized persona. She was threatened with arrest in Toronto back in 1990 for simulating masturbation during her live performance of “Like a Virgin,” though police eventually backed down. There was a moral panic then that children exposed to Madonna’s antics were being sexualized at a young age. Funny how some things don’t change.
If I had small children, I probably would not take them to this show. But what’s clear from Hansen’s clips is that several parents did, voluntarily, and seemed to know that this was going to happen. The website Florida Politics notes that while the company says that “all ages” are welcome at the show, it also notes that local regulations may vary. At some venues, minors must be accompanied by an adult in order to attend (which was the case at the Austin show in Hansen’s clips). At others, minors are banned entirely.
It doesn’t appear that there’s actual nudity in the show. And the amount of sexualization would put it at maybe an R rating if it were a movie. What we have here is a lot of screaming and politicization about families making entertainment decisions other adults do not like. This is, flat out, a moral panic.”
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“Politicians are happy to sow fear in others in order to advance their careers. DeSantis has made it clear that he’s happy to perpetuate the culture war, treating those with progressive politics as public enemies and fighting against the “woke” crowd, going so far as to endorse and encourage laws that clearly violate the First Amendment, all for the purpose of cultivating and benefitting from the moral panic.”
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“Madonna and the moral panics of pop and rap music of the 1980s and early 1990s come to mind. Florida is the state that attempted to ban 2 Live Crew from selling a rap album by deeming it obscene, until the group won the battle in court. When we look back at those days, it may all seem absurd. Gen Xers did not grow up to be any more sexualized or out-of-control than the baby boomers.
Claiming that drag shows are different is a subjective evaluation based on how a person feels about exposure to drag performances. It is an attempt to force one group of people’s parental choices on the collective. And the mindless tossing around of the word “groomer” is just an epithet designed to shut down opposition on the belief that nobody wants to be accused of supporting child sexual abuse. It’s a reminder of back during the 1970s through the 1990s when anybody who was not heterosexual was regularly accused of trying to recruit kids. Moral panics about gay people interacting with children are hardly new.
We have laws about minors and nudity and sexually explicit live performances. And we have parents to make decisions for stuff that falls just on the legal side of that line. That’s how it has been for the longest of times, and drag queens don’t change that calculus. If you don’t want your children to see this stuff, don’t take them. Leave everybody else alone.”
“If wealthy homeowners want to live in places likely to experience severe weather events, they’re free to do so, but it shouldn’t be the federal government’s responsibility to help protect them against the consequences.”
https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19/2023/1/1/23532942/xi-jinping-china-zero-covid-travel
https://www.yahoo.com/news/explainer-why-u-flights-were-142321962.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/21/data-brokers-privacy-federal-government-00072600
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/14/cdc-long-covid-deaths-00073816