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The War Crimes That Don’t Get Punished – Article by Ron Paul

The War Crimes That Don’t Get Punished – Article by Ron Paul

Ron Paul

July 11, 2019

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Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) found himself in hot water recently over comments he made in defense of Navy SEAL Edward Gallagher, who faces war crimes charges over his alleged conduct while serving in combat overseas. Gallagher is charged with stabbing a 15-year-old ISIS member while in custody, of taking photos posing with the corpse of the teen, and with killing several civilians.

Defending Gallagher recently, Hunter put his own record up next to the SEAL to suggest that he’s an elected Congressman who has done worse things in battle than Gallagher.

That’s where Hunter’s defense earned him some perhaps unwanted attention. While participating in the first “Battle of Fallujah” in early 2007, by Hunter’s own account he and his fellow soldiers killed hundreds of innocent civilians, including women and children. They fired mortars into the city and killed at random.

In the sanitized world of US mainstream media reporting on US wars overseas, we do not hear about non-combatants being killed by Americans. How many times has there been any reporting on the birth defects that Iraqis continue to suffer in the aftermath of US attacks with horrific weapons like depleted uranium and white phosphorus?

Rep. Hunter described his philosophy when fighting in Iraq:

“You go in fast and hard, you kill people, you hit them in the face and then you get out…We’re going to hurt you and then we’re going to leave. And if you want to be nice to America, we’ll be nice to you. If you don’t want to be nice to us, we’re going to slap you again.”

This shows how much Duncan Hunter does not understand about war. When he speaks of hitting people in the face until they are nice to America, he doesn’t seem to realize that the people of Fallujah – and all of Iraq – never did a thing to the US to deserve that hit in the face. The war was launched on the basis of lies and cooked-up intelligence by many of the people who are serving in the current Administration.

And that brings us to the real war criminals. Rep. Duncan Hunter and his fellow soldiers may have killed hundreds of innocent civilians and even felt justified. Their superior officers, after all, established the rules of engagement. Above those superior officers, going up and beyond to the policymakers, the lie was sold to the American people to justify a war of choice against a country that could not have threatened us if it wanted to.

Vice President Dick Cheney knew what he was doing when he kept returning to the CIA headquarters, strong-arming analysts to make the intelligence fit the chosen policy. John Bolton and the other neocons knew what they were doing when they made claims about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction they knew were false. The Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans played its role in selling the lie. So did the media.

Edward Gallagher will face trial and possibly jail for his actions. Rep. Duncan Hunter may even face punishment – though perhaps only at the ballot box – for his admitted crimes. But until those at the top who continue to lie and manipulate us into war for their own gain face justice, the real criminals will continue to go free and we will continue pursuing a suicidal neocon foreign policy.

Ron Paul, MD, is a former three-time Republican candidate for U. S. President and Congressman from Texas.

This article is reprinted with permission from the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity.

Catalonia Shows the Danger of Disarming Civilians – Article by Laura Williams

Catalonia Shows the Danger of Disarming Civilians – Article by Laura Williams

The New Renaissance Hat
Laura Williams
October 28, 2017
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Since the tragic murder of 59 peaceful concertgoers in Las Vegas on Sunday, October 1, 2017, I’ve heard well-intentioned Americans from all political corners echoing heartbroken and tempting refrains:

Can’t we just ban guns?

Surely we can all get together on the rocket launchers.

Things like this would happen less often.

We have enough military.

While victims were still in surgery, some took to television and social media to criticize the “outdated” and “dangerous” Second Amendment to the Constitution. They have lived so long in a safe, stable society that they falsely believe armed citizens are a threat to life and liberty for everyone.

Those who claim to see no necessity or benefits of individual gun ownership need only look to the rolling hills of Catalonia, where a live social experiment is currently unfolding.

Unarmed Patriots

Just hours before an alleged lone gunman opened fire from the Mandalay Bay casino, the citizens of a small region surrounding Barcelona, Spain, cast a vote for their regional independence. Catalonia’s citizens have a unique language, culture, and history, and consider Spain a neighboring power, not their rightful rulers. So as America’s Continental Congress heroically did (and as Texans and Californians occasionally threaten to do) Catalonia wished to declare independence and secede.

Polling stations in Catalonia were attacked by heavily armed agents of the Spanish government with riot gear and pointed rifles. Spanish National Police fired rubber bullets and unleashed tear gas canisters on voters, broke down polling center doors, disrupted the vote, and destroyed enough ballots to throw results into serious doubt.

Exceedingly few of those would-be patriots were armed.

In Spain, firearm ownership is not a protected individual right. Civilian firearms licenses are restricted to “cases of extreme necessity” if the government finds “genuine reason.” Background checks, medical exams, and license restrictions further restrict access. Licenses are granted individually by caliber and model, with automatic weapons strictly forbidden to civilians. Police can demand a citizen produce a firearm at any time for inspection or confiscation. Spain has enacted, it would seem, the kind of “common sense restrictions” American gun-control advocates crave.

But of course, that doesn’t mean that Spanish citizens don’t buy guns. In fact, Spanish taxpayers maintain an enormous arsenal of weapons, which are all in the hands “professional armed police forces within the administration of the state, who are the persons in charge of providing security to the population.”

Those agents of the Spanish government weren’t “providing security to the population” of Catalonia on Sunday — they were pointing guns at would-be founding patriots who had challenged the rule of their oppressors.

“If somebody tries to declare the independence of part of the territory — something that cannot be done — we will have to do everything possible to apply the law,” Spain’s justice minister said in a public address.  While many polling places were closed or barricaded, 2.3 million voters (90% in favor of independence) were permitted to vote, he claimed, “because the security forces decided that it wasn’t worth using force because of the consequences that it could have.”

The consequences of a government using force to control those it is sworn to protect must be high. When citizens are armed, the consequences for tyranny rise and its likelihood falls.

Armed Tyrants

Americans have grown too trustful of the federal government, too ready to assume its bureaucrats have only our best interests at heart. Even with a maniacal man-child in the Oval Office, many are seemingly eager to turn over individual liberty to those who promise to manage our lives for us. The United States was designed to be the smallest government in the history of the world, with no standing army, and little right to intrude in the private activities of its citizens. Instead, we have the most powerful and intrusive government in human history, with 800 permanent military bases in 70 countries, unfathomable firepower, and staggering surveillance capabilities. Unchecked abuses of power are routine and tolerated.

67 federal agencies, including the IRS and the FDA, have military weapons, according to the OpenTheBooks Oversight Report “The Militarization of America“. Among the most intrusive programs, including the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Safety Agency, do not disclose their weaponry budget.

The number of armed government officials with arrest and firearm authority has doubled since 1996. The US now has more armed “civilian” federal officers (200,000+) than US Marines (182,000). The IRS spends millions of taxpayer dollars annually on pump-action shotguns, AR-15 rifles, riot gear, and Special Forces contractors to train thousands of “special agents” in targeting American citizens.

Local police, sheriffs, and state troopers have also been armed to wage war against American citizens.  Battlefield weapons are being given to state and local police, allegedly to combat drug trafficking and fight terrorist threats at local pumpkin festivals. Military SWAT-style raids are used to serve search warrants for low-level drug possession, not hostage situations. Relatives and neighbors of alleged criminals have had government guns held to their children’s heads. Violations of civil rights, including illegal searches and the seizure of money and property without evidence of any crime, are commonplace.

Law enforcement requests military equipment directly from the Pentagon’s war-fighting machine: tanks, machine guns, rocket launchers, tear gas, camouflage, shields, and gas masks.  Military equipment is often purchased with civil asset forfeiture slush funds to bypass legislative appropriations challenges.

The high percentage of civilian law enforcement who are military veterans (one in five, by some estimates) compounds the cultural risks of treating average Americans like enemy combatants.

Showdowns between civilians and heavily armed agents of the state in FergusonBaltimore, the Oregon Wildlife Refuge, and at various other political protests across the country should remind us that gun-control advocates won’t be reducing the number of guns so much as shifting them all into either federal or criminal hands.

The senseless murder in Las Vegas is a frighteningly familiar tragedy. But don’t say “Americans shouldn’t be allowed to buy guns” when what you mean is “citizens should only be allowed to buy guns for their rulers.”

Dr. Laura Williams teaches communication strategy to undergraduates and executives. She is a passionate advocate for critical thinking, individual liberties, and the Oxford Comma.

This article was published by The Foundation for Economic Education and may be freely distributed, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which requires that credit be given to the author. Read the original article.

IJ and Small Business Owner Beat IRS on Civil Asset Forfeiture – Article by Adam Bates

IJ and Small Business Owner Beat IRS on Civil Asset Forfeiture – Article by Adam Bates

The New Renaissance HatAdam Bates
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The court struck a blow for property rights

Last year I referred readers to the abuse of civil asset forfeiture laws by the IRS in its attempt to take more than $107,000 from North Carolina small business owner Lyndon McLellan without charging him with any crime.

The IRS cleaned out Mr. McLellan’s business account because it suspected him of “structuring,” an offense whereby a person avoids legally-mandated financial reporting requirements by keeping their deposits and withdrawals under $10,000.

Because there are many perfectly legitimate reasons a business owner may deposit less than $10,000 at a time (for instance, if their insurance policy only covers $10,000 cash on hand), and because civil asset forfeiture allows the government to seize cash and property without proving any wrongdoing, IRS structuring seizures are prone to abuse.

Tacitly recognizing the abuse allowed by the law, former Attorney General Eric Holder announced changes to the use of civil forfeiture in structuring offenses last year. The policy changes should have spared innocent business owners like Lyndon McLellan, but it seems some federal prosecutors never got the memo.

In fact, the Assistant U.S. Attorney in charge of the case responded to criticism by sending veiled threats to Lyndon McLellan and his lawyers at the Institute for Justice, warning them against publicizing the case lest it “ratchet up feelings” in the IRS offices.

The publicity worked. After significant public and political pressure, the IRS relented and returned the amount they had taken from Mr. McLellan’s bank account. As I noted last year, however, the IRS refused to reimburse Mr. McLellan for the costs of fighting the seizure or to pay interest on the money it had wrongfully seized.

But this week a federal judge ruled that the IRS must do more to make Mr. McLellan whole, and awarded him legal costs totalling more than $20,000.

The court held:

Certainly, the damage inflicted upon an innocent person or business is immense when, although it has done nothing wrong, its money and property are seized. Congress, acknowledging the harsh realities of civil forfeiture practice, sought to lessen the blow to innocent citizens who have had their property stripped from them by the Government. …

This court will not discard lightly the right of a citizen to seek the relief Congress has afforded.

Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of Mr. McLellan and the Institute for Justice, the good guys won this time. Ultimately, however, the only way to ensure that civil forfeiture abuses stop happening is to abolish civil forfeiture. If the government cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person engaged in criminal activity, it should not be able to punish them as if they’re guilty.

As long as Congress and state legislatures allow this practice to continue, more innocent Americans will end up fighting for their livelihoods like Lyndon McLellan had to.

Cross-posted from Cato.org.

Adam Bates is a policy analyst with Cato’s Project on Criminal Justice. His research interests include Constitutional law, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, police militarization, and overcriminalization.

This article was published by The Foundation for Economic Education and may be freely distributed, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which requires that credit be given to the author.

Handcuffed and Helpless – Article by T.K. Coleman

Handcuffed and Helpless – Article by T.K. Coleman

The New Renaissance HatT.K. Coleman
July 28, 2015

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There’s a naive idea floating around that an innocent person should never be afraid of cops.

 

Editors’ Note from the Foundation for Economic Education: FEE faculty T.K. Coleman is consistently one of our students’ favorite speakers and teachers. His insight and magnetism would be impossible to replace. We not only consider him a friend, but a member of the FEE family.

Recently T.K. related the story of his experience with police abuse. We cannot independently verify the account he gives here, but we offer his story based on our belief in T.K. Coleman as a human being and as a friend to our organization.

We believe it is important to cover the problem of police abuse from the perspective of one who has experienced it.

What you are about to read is not a philosophical argument. It’s a personal testimony. The aim of telling this story is neither to make a political statement, nor to score points for a particular ideology. For almost three years, I’ve mostly held it in. But it’s become clear to me that it’s time to give a more detailed account to a broader audience.

*             *             *

One Friday night, my wife and I were driving through a small town on the way to a comedy club in Manhattan Beach, California. We were going to hang out and share a few laughs. On the way, we were pulled over by the police.

Two officers approached our car. One of them came to my window. The other one came to her window.

Without asking to see my license or registration, the officer on my side told me to get out of the car. I immediately and respectfully complied without raising a single question or objection. And in case you’re wondering, I wasn’t dressed in gang colors, nor was I wearing a hoodie.

When I exited the car, he turned me around, handcuffed me, threw me against the side of my car, and did a complete body search on me. As he groped me, he said, “This is how we do it in LA.”

I remember seeing a woman walking across the street holding hands with her little girl. We made eye-contact. She picked her little girl up and jogged in the other direction. Who could blame her? If I saw one of society’s most trusted authority figures manhandling a guy, I’d also assume this was a potentially dangerous situation.

The officer then removed the wallet from my pocket and pulled out the cash.

“Why do you have so much cash on you?”

“Sir, I honestly didn’t feel like a $100 was a lot of cash to have on me. I’m going out with my wife tonight and just wanted to have a little cash on me.”

“We’ll see.”

Next, he asked me where I lived. I told him my address. He laughed and said, “This n****r knows his address.” Then he walked me to the police car and literally threw me in the back seat and shut the door. From the back seat of a police car, I watched the officer join his partner who was already busy questioning my wife. They also made her get out of the car. They both got in her face and started questioning her.

Imagine what goes on inside of a man’s head when he’s handcuffed and helpless as he watches two men with guns get in his wife’s face. Imagine the complex blend of confusion, fear, irrational optimism, and rage that festers inside one’s soul as he watches one cop take his wife’s purse and pour all the contents out, while the other officer literally crawls around inside our car for several minutes.

They spent about 10 more minutes aggressively questioning my wife.

One of the officers returned to the car with my wallet and proceeded to look up my info in the system.

“You got any baby momma drama?” he asked me.

“I don’t have any children, sir.”

“You sure you ain’t got no baby momma drama?”

“I am certain I have no children, sir. There are no women out there who are even under the impression that I am the father of their child.”

“Are you clean? Are you clean? You ain’t got no drugs? You ain’t got nothing on you? No baby momma drama?” he says.

“I am clean,” I said.

For the entire time we were talking, my eyes were deadlocked on that other officer and my wife. After what felt like an eternity, the officer let me out of the car and took off the handcuffs.

“You’re good,” he told me.

As I slowly walked back to our car, I said to one of the officers, “Sir, I’m not trying to be antagonistic or disrespectful, but is there a reason for why I was pulled over?”

“We just had to check you out.”

I wanted to say, “What does that even mean?” But more importantly, I wanted to get us out of that situation safely. Given the way he man-handled me earlier, it was obvious to me that I was dealing with guys who weren’t above breaking protocol. So I just walked back to the car, took a deep breath, asked my wife if she was alright, and did my best Denzel Washington from Glory impersonation as I tried to keep it together.

Our comedy show started at 8 P.M. We were pulled over at about 7:30. When they let us go, it was about 10 minutes after the hour. We decided we couldn’t go home, or it would feel as if we let them win. So we drove to a local cinema, watched a movie, came back home, had some coffee, and just stayed up talking with each other about it.

*             *             *

I’m grateful that we didn’t get killed. I’m grateful that my wife didn’t get assaulted. I’m grateful that they didn’t plant drugs on me or put me in the hospital.

But my gratitude doesn’t change the fact that these men abused their power, disrespected my wife, laid their hands on my body in an inappropriate way, scared the hell out of us both, made us miss our show, and treated us like criminals simply because they felt entitled to do so.

They will not ruin my life, nor will they determine my destiny, but I want to put this story on the record because this was neither the first nor the second time something like this happened to me, and I sincerely believe that things like this happen all over the country.

There’s this naive idea floating around that people should never be afraid of cops as long as they’re innocent and compliant. For a lot of people in this country, that’s simply not true. This isn’t about playing some mythical race-card, nor is it about me promoting the idea that all cops are evil. I’m sure there are lots of cops who are nice to their kids and fun to hang out with when they’re having beer with their buddies. (I’m also sure that’s true of a lot of so-called thugs.)

But if we want to have intelligent discussions about authority in this country, we have to stop using a logic that tells us that people in authority always have a fair reason for doing what they do. We do a lot of talking about what people can do to avoid being abused by cops. We don’t talk as much as we should about the abuse that happens to people who follow all those instructions. If we can’t question authority, we are doomed.

*             *             *

Here’s a habit I picked up early on: When I see police officers, I shift into my A-game.

If I feel an itch on my forehead, I’ll notify the cops first before scratching the itch because I want them to feel safe and secure about the movement of my hand. This is a technique I refer to as “not getting shot.”

I learned techniques like this from the first day I received my driver’s license. Growing up in the suburbs, I was always afraid to drive my dad’s Lincoln Town Car.

I was too afraid to tell him, but I would cringe when he’d ask me to drive his car because I knew I would be pulled over and harassed by cops whose worldview wasn’t big enough to imagine me in a nice car (even though it was normal to see young people driving nice cars in the neighborhood where I grew up).

I remember driving my dad’s car once, and he left his toolbox in the back seat. A cop pulled me over and asked why I had a toolbox. Fair enough. I told him my dad was in real estate and construction, and that I was working with him at one of his buildings. The cop had me step out of the car, handcuffed me, and searched the toolbox while I sat on the curb in handcuffs.

“Are there any other weapons in this car besides this hammer here?”

My overly diplomatic reply was this: “With all due respect, sir, the hammer is not a weapon, but rather one of many tools in that toolbox we use for work. However, I understand where you’re coming from and I can see how you might be inclined to see it as a weapon, but those tools are only used for work.”

He let me go. I can only imagine what my fate would have been if I hadn’t learned about the loaded question fallacy. Two points for philosophy. Hurray.

By the way, the officer gave me no warnings, citations, or explanations. Like the guys from my earlier story, he just wanted to “check me out.”

Unfortunately, my techniques don’t make me feel all that secure, nor does the fact that today I drive a car that’s a lot more modest than my dad’s. At every stage of my adulthood, I’ve been pulled over by cops, dragged out of my car, handcuffed, spoken to like I was a stupid little boy, humiliated in public, called racial slurs, and manhandled by multiple guys with badges multiples times (without being arrested or charged with anything), in spite of the fact that I’ve never been armed, and I’ve always complied with their every request.

When I spent two years without having a car, it was one of the most peaceful, cop-free times in my life. I would still get harassed at times, but it was so much harder for them to come up with excuses for stopping me. I have never been physically or psychologically abused by drug-dealing “thugs,” but I have definitely been abused by police who thought it was okay to push me around because I fit their stereotype of a thug.

Some people automatically feel safer when cops are around, but that’s not a universal experience. It’s certainly not mine. I’m not angry at every cop, but I am deeply concerned about the frighteningly popular belief that you must have done something wrong if you were abused by one.

*             *             *

When I first wrote about this on my Facebook page, I only had my family and friends in mind. Prior to that, I’d never shared the full details with anyone except for a small group of people.

But more and more, I’d been involved in conversations about police brutality. It seems to be on everyone’s mind. And while I acknowledge that these issues are more complex than many people make them out to be, there was one recurring element in many of these conversations that really irked me: The idea that a police officer would never mistreat someone if they conducted themselves in the right way. I know from personal experience that this assumption is false.

Indeed, I know many people who have been mistreated by authorities who abuse their power and they’re simply afraid to talk about it. Since I shared a version of this account on Facebook, over 1500 hundred people have shared my Facebook post. I’ve received tons of messages from people who have been victims of various kinds of abuse, not just from cops, but abuse in general. Many of them thanked me for inspiring them to tell their own story. I’ve even had police officers apologize to me on behalf of other police officers.

But why are people so often silent in the face of abuse? They don’t want to risk their careers; they don’t want to make enemies at their church; they don’t want to be associated with the wrong political party; they don’t want to be seen as liars; they don’t want anyone targeting them.

And I get it. Just since I shared this on social media, people have called me a liar, a bullshitter, a slanderer, a cop hater and an attention seeker. Honestly, I can relate with those people who would rather just stay silent than suffer the indignity of the aftermath — which so often just adds insult to injury.

But then there are the people who find inspiration, perhaps to tell their own story. I wrote this for them. Some have asked why I would write something like this if I have no chance of bringing the cops to justice. My answer is that I wrote this primarily in hopes that some people’s minds will be opened and others’ hearts will be healed due to what I went through. Most importantly, I wrote this so that people who stay silent — for whatever reason — will know they aren’t alone.

I wish I had footage of what happened. I wish I had had the opportunity to obtain badge numbers, names, or license plate numbers without fear. Instead all I could think was “Please God let me out of this situation alive.” “Please don’t let them hurt my wife.” “What in the world is happening to me?” When they finally let me go, I was mostly just relieved that we were going to get out safe.

Believe it or not, there was a point when it did occur to me to try to get some information on these police officers. When I asked the one cop why we had been stopped, I thought about getting a look at their license plate number right then. But it occurred to me that things could escalate again if they perceived me as antagonizing them. I was scared of what they might do next if they noticed me looking at their car as if I were trying to obtain their information.

*             *             *

After my wife and I left, we calmed down. I started to reflect on things. I wished I could have gotten something — a badge number, a license tag, anything. Still, I decided to report it. The next day, I called the police department in the town where we were pulled over. I spoke with an officer who was appalled by my story, but who said it couldn’t be his department. He asked me if I was sure it wasn’t the state police. I honestly didn’t know. He believed my story, though, and he told me that if those were his guys, he would deal with them harshly. He apologized on behalf of police officers. We talked for almost an hour and he promised to have a meeting with his department about my story.

I also called state police as well as the departments for a couple surrounding towns but with the same results. My lack of evidence made things difficult. I tried hard to channel my anger in the direction of holding those officers accountable, but ultimately fell short. So, all I have is my story and the hope that some good can come from telling it.

All I ask of you, dear reader, is that you consider it an invitation to rethink the way some of these police encounters are framed and construed by all parties. If you’re skeptical of my version of events, that’s fine. I encourage you to keep on doubting.

But please don’t be selective in your skepticism. Question me. Question others. Question the police. Question authority. Most importantly, question your own assumptions. The truth will come will eventually come from people willing to search for it.

T.K. Coleman is a philosopher, writer, lecturer, entrepreneur, and life coach living in Los Angeles, California. He is the co-founder and Education Director for Praxis, a 10-month apprenticeship program that combines a traditional liberal arts education with practical skills training, professional development, and real-world business experience.

This article was published by The Foundation for Economic Education and may be freely distributed, subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which requires that credit be given to the author.

The Police State Needed to Enforce Vice Laws – Article by Bradley Doucet

The Police State Needed to Enforce Vice Laws – Article by Bradley Doucet

The New Renaissance Hat
Bradley Doucet
June 27, 2014
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What if Canadian governments rigorously enforced all the laws of the land, outrageous price tag and complaints from bleeding-heart civil-rights types be damned? It might be literally impossible economically speaking, with the costs in terms of extra police and prisons approaching and even surpassing 100% of GDP. This is all the more likely given the lost productivity associated with throwing millions of people in jail. But leaving aside the economic calculation, which I have neither the resources nor the expertise to carry out, I want to focus instead on the fact that rigorously enforcing Canadian laws would involve throwing millions of people in jail.
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Don’t believe me? I have two words for you: drug laws. According to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 44% of Canadians say they have used marijuana at least once, and hence have broken the law. Next time you’re sitting on a bus, look to your left, then look to your right: On average, one of those two people has at least tried marijuana, assuming only that bus riders are statistically representative of Canadians in the relevant ways. That’s roughly 15 million Canadians who would have done jail time if our laws were perfectly enforced.

Even if we just incarcerate those who have used marijuana in the past year, we’re talking about approximately 1 in 8 Canadians aged 15-64, which means locking up some 3 million people. More, really, because I know there are some aging hippies and recently retired baby boomers over the age of 65 out there who are still toking up.

Of course, this ignores the dynamic effects of massively ramping up enforcement levels. If we really put our money (all of it?) where our mouths are when it comes to drug laws and made a serious effort to arrest every last person who took a pull on a joint before passing it along, there would be some significant decrease in the number of people who smoke marijuana. But this would mean spending a whole lot more money. Even the United States, which spends over $50 billion a year on the drug war, only arrested around 750,000 people in 2012 for marijuana law violations (650,000 of which for mere possession). Given that both countries have similar rates of marijuana use, this means that most of the roughly 25 million Americans aged 15-64 who smoked pot last year got away with it.

But economics aside, if we get really serious about enforcing drug laws, we could say goodbye to anything resembling privacy. The draconian measures required even to approach total compliance with our drug laws would be positively Orwellian: cops on every corner, stopping and frisking passersby that look suspicious (or foreign); road traffic slowing to a crawl thanks to checkpoints at major intersections where you have to show your papers and pee into a cup; random no-knock raids at every third door, during which swat team members may or may not shoot the family dog; warrantless wiretapping of every phone call and email message, carried out by humourless killjoys drunk on their power; cameras in all our bedrooms and bathrooms, watched by perverted busybodies who couldn’t cut it as airport security goons.

Patently impossible, you say. We wouldn’t stand for it, you object. Maybe. But then, why do we stand for selective enforcement, with its unavoidable, inherent injustices? If the police and the courts can’t apply the law equally to all, then officers and prosecutors and judges will apply it at their discretion. Since humans are far from flawless, they will apply it disproportionately, according to conscious or subconscious prejudices. Or they will target gadflies like Marc Emery, whose five-year exile to a US prison is finally coming to an end. Was he extradited and thrown in the slammer for selling marijuana seeds over the Internet, or for criticizing the powers that be a little too loudly and a little too effectively?

The Canadian government’s new bill proposing to outlaw sex work (or rather, to outlaw the buying of sex, but not the selling of sex) would similarly not be enforceable to any significant degree without a massive police state. Arrest every person who visits a prostitute? We’ll need many more cops, much more surveillance, many more courts, and many more prisons. And while prostitutes would not be thrown in jail, arresting all their clients would effectively make it impossible for them to practice their trade. Which of course would be the point, if the law were fully enforced. It won’t be, so again we’ll be left with selective, discretionary enforcement, with the added benefit of making prostitutes’ lives more dangerous while appearing to be doing something.

But this unattractive choice between a police state on the one hand and discriminatory, opportunistic enforcement on the other is a false dichotomy. As my QL colleague Adam Allouba recently wrote in a different context, “a far better solution is to make as little of the human experience subject to legislated rules as possible.” We wouldn’t want to do away with laws against such clearly destructive acts as murder, assault, theft, and fraud. But why exactly can’t we follow the lead of places like the Netherlands when it comes to voluntary exchanges of money for sex or soft drugs?

Our existing and soon-to-be-adopted vice laws rest on the assumption that either buyers (of pot) or sellers (of sex) are victims. Now, the very illegality of the activities in question may indeed increase the incidence of peripheral crimes like gang violence or human trafficking. But by and large, voluntary exchanges themselves do not involve victims—just people who have made choices of which you may disapprove. And the lack of any real victim is precisely what makes vice “crimes” so difficult to prosecute without gargantuan budgets and a blatant disregard for people’s rights. In this day and age, knowing all that we know, we can, and should, do better.

Bradley Doucet is Le Québécois Libre‘s English Editor and the author of the blog Spark This: Musings on Reason, Liberty, and Joy. A writer living in Montreal, he has studied philosophy and economics, and is currently completing a novel on the pursuit of happiness. He also writes for The New Individualist, an Objectivist magazine published by The Atlas Society, and sings.