“A violent drug cartel is suspected of leaving a severed human leg found hanging from a pedestrian bridge Wednesday in Toluca, just west of Mexico City,” CBS News reports. “[T]he trunk of the body was left on the street below, near the city’s center, along with handwritten signs signed by the Familia Michoacana cartel.”

Familia Michoacana, which apparently specializes in the production and distribution of methamphetamine, “has become known for carrying out ruthless, bloody ambushes of police in Mexico State and local residents in Guerrero” to protect its lucrative business.

Meanwhile, over the last several months, opportunistic US politicians have used increasing US drug overdose numbers linked to increasing use of fentanyl as an excuse to get an “invade Mexico to fight the cartels” bandwagon rolling.

Given the history of stupid US foreign policy ideas, it seems like it should be incredibly hard to come up with one that out-stupids the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq combined, but with not so much as a “hold my beer” warning, these idiots seem to have managed it.

If any of those past fiascoes could be said to have had any saving graces at all, the main one was that they were conducted far, far away, versus enemies who lacked much ability to bring the war home to America.

Mexico, as you’re no doubt aware,  shares a 2,000-mile border with the US. Millions of people cross that border every year, with or without permission from or even detection by the US government. And the major cartels, as part of their drug distribution operations, already maintain a permanent presence in the US.

Any “war on the cartels” would be fought at least partly on US soil, and it would be fought by the kind of people who don’t quail from things like leaving severed human legs hanging from bridges to send their messages. Do we really want more of that kind of thing here? I have to ask, because sending US troops barging into Mexico is how we get things like that here.

The US government has been fighting — and losing — a “war on drugs” for most of a century now.

That war created the cartels.

That war empowers the cartels.

Expanding that war would unleash the cartels’ most vicious behaviors on US soil, while reducing unsafe drug consumption little if at all.

Legalizing drugs, on the other hand, would devastate the cartels’ profit and loss statements, put production and distribution of substances Americans obviously want into the hands of reputable/peaceable businesses, and reduce overdose deaths and other negative side effects of drug use by bringing standardized dosage and quality to American consumers.

Whose side are the “invade Mexico” demagogues on? Not yours.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

By the time that the United States Supreme Court decided Joseph R. Biden, President of the United States, et al. v. Nebraska, et al. on June 30, it was no longer surprising that a majority Republican Court would side against a Democratic administration in opposing broad executive power to forgive student debt — even if the supposed presidential authority for doing so ultimately descended from a claim by George W. Bush in 2002.

It wasn’t the “‘U.S. Does Whatever It Wants’ plan, which would have permitted the U.S. to take any action it wished anywhere in the world at any time” as explained in The Onion‘s satire.

These days, Democrats are the ones eager to interpret the Higher Education Relief Opportunities For Students (HEROES) Act as granting carte blanche over American campuses, while Republicans like Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett observe that “an instruction to ‘pick up dessert’ is not permission to buy a four-tier wedding cake.”

Initial support for the HEROES Act was bipartisan, so it might seem that the parties of plutocrats and educrats merely drifted back toward their default settings.

Biden frames his case as “providing relief to millions of hard-working Americans” rather than “billions in pandemic-related loans to businesses.” He doesn’t mention It’s a Wonderful Life, but clearly aims to evoke something like the real-life equivalent of the cinematic Bailey Bros. Building & Loan Association lending a hand to the little guys instead of fat-cat Scrooges like “Henry F. Potter, the richest and meanest man in the county.”

Yet just as George Bailey paying him off further enriches Mr. Potter (whose comeuppance had to wait for a 1986 Saturday Night Live skit), subsidized student loans prop up the ever-rising costs that make taking on debt a commonplace prerequisite for college attendance in the first place.

Addressing her nephew’s graduating class of 2006, Barbara Ehrenreich wrote that “it’s too soon to call college a scam, and as long as they teach a few truly enlightening things, like history and number theory, I won’t.”

Half a century earlier, Howard Zinn avoided taking Richard Hofstadter’s history classes at Columbia University after “hearing consistently that Hofstadter was not a particularly good teacher because he was so focused on his writing” (in the words of Zinn biographer Davis Joyce), but was deeply influenced by Hofstadter’s books, especially The American Political Tradition. Aspiring historians can order a copy online for less than 0.1% of the five-figure cost of annual tuition, the postgrad usefulness of which Ehrenreich notes may be confined to knowing how to “pronounce the day’s specials” while waiting tables.

As Dana Carvey’s Bailey asked, “What are we waiting for?”

New Yorker Joel Schlosberg is a senior news analyst at The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

1. “Never too late to call college a scam” by Joel Schlosberg, Wahpeton, North Dakota Daily News, July 3, 2023
2. “Never too late to call college a scam” by Joel Schlosberg, The Wilson, North Carolina Times, July 10, 2023
3. “Never too late to call college a scam” by Joel Schlosberg, The Enterprise [Wilson, North Carolina], July 10, 2023
4. “Never too late to call college a scam” by Joel Schlosberg, The Johnstonian News [Smithfield, North Carolina], July 10, 2023
5. “Never too late to call college a scam” by Joel Schlosberg, The Butner-Creedmoor News [Creedmoor, North Carolina], July 10, 2023
6. “Never too late to call college a scam” by Joel Schlosberg, The Wake Weekly [Wake Forest, North Carolina], July 10, 2023
7. “Never Too Late to Call College a Scam” by Joel Schlosberg, Carolina Panorama [Columbia, South Carolina], July 19, 2023
8. “Opinion: Never too late to call college a scam” by Joel Schlosberg, Newton, Iowa Daily News, July 25, 2023

On June 30, the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. Lorie Smith, the court held, cannot be compelled to create web sites for same-sex weddings because that would require her to engage in speech “inconsistent with her belief that marriage should be reserved to unions between one man and one woman.”

The outcome is constitutionally correct as far as it goes. Associate justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, makes a strong argument for the ruling on First Amendment grounds. The state has no more authority to compel speech than it has to forbid speech.

Unfortunately, the opinion also includes a poison pill that sanctions continued violations of the Thirteenth Amendment’s prohibition on involuntary servitude, also known as slavery.

“[W]e do not question,” Alito writes, “the vital role public accommodations laws play in realizing the civil rights of all Americans.”

Public accommodations laws play no role whatsoever in realizing the rights of anyone, because no one has a right to purchase the services of someone who isn’t willing to serve.

The reasons why Person A might not want to serve Person B are irrelevant.

Such reasons could be, as in Smith’s case, about what Person B wants done. She’s willing to serve LGBTQ customers — but unwilling to engage in the particular speech of promoting their weddings.

Those reasons could also be about who Person B is. Person A might dislike Person B’s skin color, religion, sexual orientation, political affiliation, or any number of other characteristics, most of which seem silly (and possibly ugly).

But we all have the right to decide who we’ll do business with, even if our reasons are silly or ugly. Person A’s body, mind, time, and effort belong to Person A, not to Person B, until and unless Person A freely agrees to sell or rent those things to Person B.

Establishing a “protected class,” entitled to involuntary service on the part of others, makes that “protected class” a class of slave owners, and everyone else their slaves.

The court’s ruling doesn’t avoid that issue — it actively comes down on the side of Person B’s supposed “right” to enslave Person A.

Apart from the moral repugnance of that position, its negative consequences fall into a “seen versus unseen” chasm.

What we SEE in “public accommodations” laws is that a black family can rent a motel room from a racist; a same-sex couple can get a wedding web site or cake from a homophobe; a Jew can rent a venue for his son’s bar mitzvah from an anti-Semite.

What we DON’T see is that the bigotry remains, likely expressed in the form of poor service, over-billing, or any number of low-down dirty tricks to ruin the customer’s enjoyment of that service.

Slavery doesn’t really fight bigotry. It just hides bigotry.

What fights bigotry is freedom to associate or not, and the transparency that comes with letting bigots expose themselves so that they bear the financial and reputational costs of their revealed prejudices.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter:@thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY