The Editor's Desk

I’ve been seeing this commercial all over the place, and even during the Olympics. In case you haven’t seen it:

What I like about this commercial is the libertarian-leaning argument behind it. This commercial isn’t about whether or not people should support gay people or actually put their stamp of approval on gay marriages. It doesn’t even have any gay people in it. It’s a reminder that — regardless of what its roots might be (and the deceptions that people present about it) — marriage is a right, not an “institution,” and heterosexuals wouldn’t accept outsiders determining the legitimacy of their marriage. Neither should we.

When reading our report about Assessor Bill Postmus’s alleged addiction to meth, I couldn’t help but notice the explanation that he reportedly ended up on meth trying to deal with pain caused by scoliosis.

I thought to myself, “Pain? Isn’t that one of the arguments of allowing medical marijuana? That it helps deal with chronic pain?”

Sure enough, I did an online check and discovered that marijuana is a possible medical treatment for scoliosis pain.

Now this is interesting because San Bernardino is one of only two counties in the state that has resisted following California law and allowing prescriptions of medical marijuana within our county, arguing a conflict between the state law and federal drug laws. They keep losing their suits, but they keep trying.

So the county’s own resistance to medical marijuana use helped drive Postmus into the arms of meth. I wonder if anybody notes the irony.

Although to be fair to the county, a man operating a medical marijuana dispensary in Morro Bay that is perfectly legal under our state law was just convicted in a federal trial and could face years in prison. But now that I think about it, I find it highly unlikely the county is concerned that individual practitioners would face federal sanctions. They’re probably more concerned about federal subsidies county agencies and organizations receive to help fight this stupid drug war.

Oh, and by the way, here’s a great Huffington Post piece about the drug war. Postmus might feel better to note that the current Democratic presidential candidate and the wife of the Republican candidate have used drugs in the past. And of course, both our current Republican president and previous Democratic president are widely believed to have also done drugs in their youth.

My editorial today is about how the trans fat ban is a consequence of the public demanding government “do something” about health care costs.

Reason’s blog has another example worth exploring. Janet Riviera, in Fresno, has been in a coma for years and is being kept alive with the financial assistance of Medi-Cal.

It raises the rather horrifying ethical issue of how much of other people’s money should be used to keep somebody alive. With private insurance, this is a matter for her family. But because tax money is involved suddenly everybody gets a say.

It’s an unpleasant problem with no easy solution when we’re talking about people who can’t afford private insurance, but again it’s an example of putting decisions about health care in the hands of the government and not thinking through the consequences.

This is what lack of respect for private property leads to. Link via Radley Balko’s blog.

My editorial today is essentially a libertarian wish list of what I think folks in people in elected positions in town should consider before making decisions with the public’s money. It’s my hope that like-minded citizens would also encourage their public officials to think more about both the actual need and the actual consequences of the decisions they make.

I developed this “back to basics” concept a few months ago for a different and perhaps surprising reason: I was considering running for City Council myself. A couple of local friends also encouraged me to consider the idea. I do a lot of analysis and discussion, of course, of City Council decisions and provide a different point of view.

Unfortunately, I can’t be the editor of the newspaper and serve on City Council. Well, in a purely technical sense I could, but my boss certainly wouldn’t keep employing me, and if I were a reader I wouldn’t trust any news stories about City Council if the main editor were a member.

So if I were to run for City Council, I would have to find another job. The problem, here, though, is that there really isn’t a whole lot in Barstow I’m qualified to do besides work at the newspaper. We journalists aren’t good for a whole lot once you get us out of our element.

The only other logical fit would be education, which would have been a problem. I have issues with the union-dominated, money-wasting operations of our public school systems. It would be hypocritical for me to promote smaller government and then turn around and live off the public dime as a school teacher. (This is assuming they’d have anything to do with me anyway)

So, being the market-loving libertarian I am, I realized that I’m pretty much where Barstow needs me to be. If I don’t have value as an employee in Barstow’s business market outside the newspaper, then obviously I should stay here. Whether the City Council would have been better or worse with me on board (assuming the idea I could have won) is a question that will remain unknown.

Though feel free to speculate in the comments.

The original headline for today’s editorial about drug use and the drug war was “We are all on drugs.” However, after a discussion in the newsroom I ultimately decided that there probably is not a significant amount of overlap between Desert Dispatch opinion page readers and Weezer fans and I might get some angry calls from people thinking I was accusing them of being on drugs.

Seriously though, I do want to add a little more insight to my attitude about the drug war. Libertarians are known for their attitude in favor of drug legalization. Also, and not entirely unrelated, many libertarians are perceived to be casual drug users.

I don’t touch drugs, at all. I rarely even drink alcohol. I want to make it clear that my attitude toward drug use is not based on some naive idea that drugs are not dangerous or a problem. My attitude is based on the belief that families and friends are better resources in helping deal with these problems than the government, and there’s a lot of information out there that backs up my view.

On a personal level, I’m a child of the drug war. I turn 37 on Monday, so it was interesting to me to notice that I’ve essentially lived my entire life in this fight. Drug use tore my family apart when I was a child. I don’t care to get into the details of it, but it was devastating. I know what drug abuse can do to people. Subconsciously, I’ve made many decisions about my life to make sure I never become one of those people.

But I also know what families can do. We put ourselves back together (well, really, it was my father’s hard work that did it). Government intervention did not play a role. If the government had gotten involved in this situation when it was at its worst, who knows what would have happened? I and my sister might have become wards of the state, and as difficult as things were, I can’t imagine such a turn of events working out better for me.

A press release that arrived yesterday:

SAN BERNARDINO - San Bernardino County Supervisors Dennis Hansberger and Josie Gonzales are hosting a free workshop this week to help local non-profit organizations secure dollars from major foundations.

The “Meet the Funders” forum, featuring a panel of grant-making foundations, will be held Friday, June 6, from 8:15 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. in the Board of Supervisor’s Chambers located in the County Government Center, 385 North Arrowhead Avenue, San Bernardino.

Representatives from major funding institutions, such as the Bank of America Foundation, the California Endowment, James Irvine Foundation, Verizon Foundation, and the Washington Mutual Foundation will meet face to face with local non-profits primarily serving the County’s third and fifth district residents.

Daniel Foster, Chief Executive Officer of the Riverside Arts Museum, will lead a panel discussion to educate local organizations on how to effectively approach these foundations for funding focused in the areas of health and human services, homeless, education, youth, and the arts.

That’s right, folks in county government are going to help non-profits learn how to turn to private foundations to try to get money for programs instead of begging for public money. Kudos! Brad Mitzelfelt should join them, but then he wouldn’t have press releases to send out crowing about his involvement in getting funding for High Desert organizations.

I’m in San Antonio this week for our annual “Freedom School,” where publishers and editors of Freedom Communications newspapers gather and hear from libertarian luminaries about the issues of the day and have questions answered about local issues.

I bring this up because there have been comments relevant to our gay marriage issue in California. I received an e-mail from a reader, who wrote in part in response to my Monday editorial: “I know lots of people, to include me, who have a big problem with four judges over turning 61% of the voting population to make 3% of the state’s population happy. Scott those four judges just ‘beat it’s citizens into submission’ and how can you NOT think that?”

It concerns me that somebody believes he has been beaten into submission because the government refused to allow him to beat others into submission. As I, and all libertarians, argue, the will of the people cannot be used as an excuse to violate the rights of individuals. As Tibor Machan said yesterday in our conference, “The people cannot confer upon the government powers that they don’t have.” He was elaborating on something Freedom Communications founder R.C. Hoiles believed, which was that groups don’t have the moral authority to do things that individuals aren’t allowed to do. You can’t go around deciding who can get married. Therefore, neither do 61 percent of Californians.

These days, most speeches from gay activist organization leaders tend to inspire eye rolls from me. I’m not that interested in identity-based politics, and it frequently feels impossible to connect with gay political movements unless you’ve purchased the entire liberal identity package and think the government can make everybody get along. You also have to be willing to act like a victim, and I can’t stand doing that.

However, as a libertarian, my belief in the bedrock foundation of civil liberties is no different from theirs (the difference is where the foundation ends). I believe, and I have said before, that marriage is a right. We treat marriage as a right. As such I believe the U.S. Constitution already endorses gay marriage in the Ninth Amendment: “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” Essentially, just because a right isn’t laid out specifically in the Constitution does not mean said right doesn’t exist. But that’s considered a radical argument in today’s era of nanny government. The government gives you rights now, when it once existed to make sure your rights weren’t taken away.

I’m getting a little too far ahead, actually, as yesterday’s gay marriage decision was based on California’s Constitution, not the United States’. The judges determined denying marriage to same-sex couples violated the state’s constitution.

The responses from gay marriage opponents have been predictable, but no less frustrating. Apparently the definition of an activist judge is one that makes decisions you don’t like. Consider the response from our own county supervisor, Brad Mitzelfelt: “In 2000, the people of this state overwhelmingly supported Proposition 22, defining marriage in state law as a union between a man and a woman. With this decision, the Court has chosen to overrule the will of millions of California voters.”

Well, yes, Mr. Mitzelfelt, when millions of California voters approve a proposition that violates the state’s constitution, the court is supposed to strike it down. Determining the constitutionality of legislation is what the state Supreme Court is for.

Our congressional representative, Howard “Buck” McKeon, is also either dense or cynically manipulating the matter to get votes: “[U]nder no circumstance should the courts be allowed to show such utter disregard for the democratic process. In this case, it appears partisan politics and personal opinions are taking precedence over the rule of law; and that’s an alarming turn of events.”

Yes, actually, the court is supposed to overrule the democratic process if the democratic process produces an outcome that violates the state constitution. That’s how the “rule of law” works. Now, if you want to debate whether the judges have misinterpreted the wording of the constitution, that’s one thing, but a legislator who doesn’t understand the role of the court is a legislator who isn’t fit for office.

Let’s try changing the parties involved here to see if I can’t get my point across. According to a 2007 report from the California Secretary of State, registered Democrats make up 42.5 percent of all voters and Republicans account for 34.2 percent in this state.

So let’s say a group of Democrats got together a petition that said the State of California would not recognize marriages between registered Republicans. In theory, such a petition could pass, given the Democrats have the Republicans outnumbered. Would Mitzelfelt and McKeon accept the will of the people under such circumstances?

No, of course not, because, and I’m sure they’d agree, the state doesn’t have the right to deny the marriages of Republicans. So what makes this case different?

The state has no business deciding the legitimacy of a family, nor does it have any business validating relationships between consenting adults. I will not vote for candidates who believe that the government is the hammer to help them beat people into submission so that they may build their fantasy utopia. If private individuals choose to believe my marriage wouldn’t be valid with another man, or if churches decline to perform them, then that’s certainly their right. But I won’t have the government making that decision for me — or them.

Don’t expect my vote in June, Mitzelfelt. I don’t vote for those with no respect for basic civil liberties.

Scott Flanders, the CEO of Freedom Communications (the company that owns the Desert Dispatch) arranged a libertarian-focused presidential debate with columnist Tibor Machan (whose columns we run on Tuesdays). Frank Mickadeit over at the OC Register wrote about the event.

Machan supports voting third party Libertarian — even though said candidate is not likely to win — because it would “prepare the culture for some kind of serious reforms, maybe even a revolution.” That’s an argument I think really only matters if either the Democrats or Republicans ever showed any concern about the folks who voted third party beyond how likely they would spoil their candidates’ chances. I don’t really see candidates make any outreach to third-party voters except during the actual campaigns.

Flanders, though, came out in favor of Barack Obama, despite his tax-and-spend platform, because of his stance on other libertarian reforms such as ending the war in Iraq, restoring the separation of church and state, and other issues.

I’ve already explained why I voted for Obama in the primary — my explanation is very similar to Flanders’. As it stands, I can’t vote for McCain. There’s no way I would cast my vote for an authoritarian with possibly even less respect for the limitations of the government than George W. Bush. So my choice as well is either third party formal Libertarian candidate or whomever wins the the Democratic nomination.