A foolish drug war without end, apparently.
When contemplating these matters, it is hard not to remember that President Obama himself has admitted to smoking a lot of pot and doing cocaine (when he could afford it) in his younger days. Is this not staggering hypocrisy, Mr. Gillette?
It would only be a staggering hypocrisy if President Obama was still engaged in the behavior while trying to crackdown on others.
ReplyDeleteAh. So I suppose it is also not hypocritical for the twice-divorced Newt Gingrich to preach family values and the sanctity of marriage because he is not getting divorced right now.
ReplyDeleteAt some level, we have to allow for the fact that beliefs and/or opinions can change over time. Mr. Gingrich says that his views have changed due, in part, to his conversion to Roman Catholicism. Assuming that is true, then I am not sure that this Mr. Gingrich's change in belief (if there was one) can be called hypocritical. If Mr. Gingrich was talking about family values and the sanctity of marriage during the occassions that he was carrying on adulterous affairs, that obviously would be hypocritical. I don't know whether that happened with Mr. Gingrich.
ReplyDeleteRegarding Obama, I think it is hypocritical for a man who smoked pot and did coke as a young man to participate in and actively promote the imprisoning, now, of youths who smoke pot and do coke. I'm not aware that Obama has ever stated that he feels he should have been imprisoned for his actions.
ReplyDeleteI don't find it a very convincing argument that he can conveniently change his mind about what behavior justifies imprisonment after his life circumstances change so much. Had the drug laws been enforced against him, of course, his productive life would have been destroyed. He certainly would never have become president. Even assuming that he's had a legitimate change of heart about the appropriateness of imprisoning drug users (which I seriously doubt—this is clearly a pure political calculation) what he's saying is, in effect: "No, you may not make the mistakes I made. And not only may you not make them, but your life will be ruined because of them."
This is hypocrisy. But it's not like hypocrisy is the worst thing in the world. Most of us—yourself excluded, of course—have to and manage to live with a certain amount of it.
"Yourself excluded, of course." Ouch. I'm glad no one read comments.
ReplyDeletetee-hee!
ReplyDelete