Page 2/The Battalion/Wednesday, August 20,1906
The fallacy of consent
Mika
Foarcto
This summer a '
number of events
have taken place
that have caused
great division in
our country as well as at Texas AJrM.
Among the most controversial were the
Meese Commission's Report on Pornog
raphy. the Supreme Court's upholding
of the (.Georgia sodomy law and the
crack-down on the use and production
ot illegal drugs. Whereas most conserva
tives applauded these actions, many so-
called “enlightened" individuals
screamed and hollered that George Or
well’s prophecy — that the government
will regulate what goes on between con
senting people — was coming true.
Actions like these just caused the
blood of the ACLU and the People for
the American Way to boil because they
seem to think that "whatever goes on be
tween people is nobody's business."
Now picture if vou would that last
statement on the wall of a police vice
squad's room. Ludicrous? Read on.
W’hen vou quiz average liberals on the
issue of consent, they seem to agree with
the ACLU in principle, but they also
have a number of stipulations on who
can consent and under what circum
stances. For instance, liberals pretty well
agree that children are unable to con
sent responsibly. Thai is why they are. at
legist, against child pornography and pe
dophilia. I hank (.aid for that, but when
individuals become adults, then they
should, with impunity, be able to make
their ow n moral chokes.
Sounds reasonable, but I am re
minded that our prisons are filled with
adults who “consented" to do heinous •
crimes, so age doesn't have much to do
with it. It is not as though there is a mar
velous metamorphosis in our charac ters
as we reach eighteen years of age.
“Society," they go on to argue, “no
longet considers homosexuality as de
viant.** thereby justifying consenting
men or women engaging in immoral
acts. I his is a popular view, but if society
detri wnm , «i w4wt is right and wrong. 1
am remimiedL that not !>0 years ago.
German sdirWfY decided that Jews were
a nuisance and therefore expendable.
Now whether tacitly or outright, there is
no doubt that they consented to the
death of more than six million people.
So muc h for majority rules.
“Well as kmg as they are not hutting
anybody, and it’s in the privacy of their
own homes it's Ok." This might be ac
ceptable if it were the case. Unfortu
nately, it rarely , if ever, is the case that
what people do in private doesn't spill
over and affect the public, l^cw enforce
ment offkials have known for a long
time that even though rapists read their
pornography m the privacy of their own
homes, it tends to influence their publk
behavior.
The same holds true for people who
use prostitutes, drugs or engage in a va
riety of other illegal activities. Inva
riably, society always is burdened in one
way or another by those who engage in
‘ such activities The venereal disease and
AIDS scare are classic examples of pri
vate affairs rapidly becoming danger
ously public affairs. Many corporations
also are cracking down on employees
who use illegal drugs whether in the
workplace or at home because it adver
sely regulates their performance at
work.
“If people consent to destroy them
selves. that is their own business, not
vours, and not the government’s." This
is also a popular view, but a departure
from the traditional view. There always
have been laws against suicide and other
self-harm measures because, at one
time, we were a people who really held
to the sanctity of life. Again, though, it is
often the case that people do what is
wrong at the expense of others.
For example, do you not find it ironic
that the homosexual community is out
raged at the government's attempt to
regulate their activities, but it turns
right around and demands that the gov
ernment put up millions of dollars for
AIDS research? How funny that we
don’t want the government to tell us
about our sexual habits, but then we ex
pect them to support our illegitimate
children to the tune of 70 billion dollars
— to say nothing about the people who
have the nerve to ask the government to
f und their abortions!
“But if people consent ....** Consent
is not the issue. If I wanted to commit
suicide but was too chicken to pull the
tnggei. and I convinced a f riend to blow
my brains out. he still would be guilty of
murder, even though we both con
sented to the act. The rightness or
w rongness of the act in questkrn is the is
sue, not whether we consented to do it.
So what role does government play?
More than three hundred years ago.
John Locke wrote in his book Lex Rex,
that ~7kr sovereign or government is
above lb? laws of God. With this prem
ise the cokmists began a revolution and
built a nation that we call the United
States of America. They drew up a con
stitution that guaranteed individuals the
rights afforded them by God with the
understanding that for society to sur
vive and function well individually and
collectively, we would all have to abide
reasonably by the l^w of God. The Bible
tells us that "righteousness exalts a na
tion. but sin is a disgrace to any people "
Everybody wants a better society, but
will we collectively and individually con
sent to uphold what is right?
Mike Fomrde is a senior education ma
jor and the president of the AicM chap
ter of Americans for Biblical Govern
ment.
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Using preventive scare tactics
may encourage drug 'crisis'
When my
friends and I were
in the eighth
grade, the most in
fluential person m
our lives was our
school softball
coach. He was a
genial man. gifted
in dealing with —
boys, and we lis- Rlchord
tened intently to Coh#n
what he had to
say. One dav he told us about drugs,
specifically marijuana. He said that if we
smoked it just once we would be hooked
for life.
The coach was misinformed. W’hen I
got to college I met people w ho smoked
marijuana and did not become ad
dicted And of those people, none that 1
knew later turned to heroin. Many in
my generation therefore concluded that
everything that they had been told
about drugs was wrong. Like the coach.
we too were misinformed.
The consequences were tragic Not
only did some of that generatkin turn to
cocaine, thinking that its dangers, like
those of marijuana, were vastly exagger
ated. but they became role models for
younger kids. Drugs were extolled in
song and incorporated into the anti-es
tablishment revolt triggered by the Viet
nam War.
Now some of those erstwhile skeptics
are dead or wrecked and the model thev
set for others was. to be charitable, crim
inal They were as dumb about drugs as
the generation that preceded them.
But that pattern is being repeated
Along with the current pank about a
“drug crisis," has come the revival of old
canards.Distinctions are not being
made Some anti-drug activists talk
aboutmarijuana, cocaine and heroin
(and even alcohol and tobacco) as if they
were one in they same — equally addk-
tive, equally dangerous. When it comes
to cocaine, death by overdose is cited as
if it is common occurence when such ex
perts as Dr. Norman Zinberg of Har
vard say it is not. Cocaine users appar
ently know that. Not two weeks after
coke killed Maryland University basket
ball star l^n Bias. Cleveland Browns
running back Don Rogers died a similar
death. Clearly, Rogers — like mam co
caine users — thought Bias' death was a
fluke.
Now the Reagan administration and
House Democrats, both politkally op
portunistic, are gearing up for a new
campaign against drugs Whatever the
administration does — and Nancy Rea
gan's efforts already have been valuable
— it w ill be counterproductive if the old
scare taetks are revived. Some of what
already is being said falls into that cat
egory — the equating, say, of marijuana
with cocaine or arguing that it leads, as
day follows night, to heroin addiction.
Marijuana is bad enough as it is. No ex
aggerations are necessary.
The danger is that once again kids
might think they have been lied to. A
kid who is told that marijuana is both
the equivalent of and an inevitable step
ping-stone to heroin, might just learn
that it is not. And if he has been lied to
about marijuana, then he might con- '
elude that he has been lied to about
other drugs. If he finds out that mari
juana usuallv is not addktive (for some,
apparently it is), might he not conclude
the same thing about cocaine (it almost
always is)? And if lots of people are tak
ing coke and not dying, is it wise to tell
kids that death is a certain consequence
of usage? The ordinary consequences
are horrible enough
American society has often resorted
to wholesale remedies in dealing with
the harmful pursuit of pleasure. Once,
we coped with alcohol abuse by prohib
iting that drug completely. It didn’t
work and so reality became the mother
of sophistkation. We distinguish be
tween a single beer and a pint of gin. al
though we recognize that some people
start with one and wind up with the
other. Still, most of us don't.
The analogy between alcohol and ille
gal drugs is an inexact one since the rec
reational use of wine will not necessarily
have the same awful Consequences that
the recreational use of cocaine almost al
ways has. But the point is that we recog
nize gradations of danger and don’t tell
kids something they wul discover is false
— that a glass of wine (marijuana) at
dinner surely will lead to a pint of gin
(heroin) for breakfast
One generation learned by experi
ence that pushers are helped by well-
meaning adults peddling scare stories.
The dangers of drugs are real enough
and need no embellishment But if the
new anti-drug campaign, as welcome as
it is, falls into the hands of opportunistic
politicians, the lessons of a generation
that learned the hard way about drugs
will be lost. That generation, once
mindlessly infatuated with drugs, has
much to answer for. At the least, its an
swers should be truthful.
Copyright IMS. Wmshirngtoo host Writsn Group
Suspending “weed rights’ greater danger than smoke
f
m wji
Comes now the National!
Academy of Sciences with a
report that reminds us that
evers now and then scientists
tend to forget that human
beings aren't squeaks w heels
or guinea pigs What the
learned aiaaems recom
mends is that cigarette smok
ing be forbidden in air
planes
1 wish that everyone in the
whole world (my wife in- |
eluded) would stop smoking. Perhaps soraedav
thev will, however unlikely this is. But in the mean
time we need to remind ourselves of what smoking
is. and what smoking does for, as well as to. some
people 1 here are an estimated 37 million ex-ciga
rette smokers in America, but. strange to sav,
many of them appear not to remember how it was
in the good-bad old davs.
I kicked the habit at age 26. but even so 1 re
member what smoking did to me. In the Army,
William F
Bucklay Jr
The Battalion
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ken Sun. Sports Editor
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five seconds after reveille, a cigarette was in my
mouth. At college during Lent I gave up smoking
until sundown. I would find myself, notwithstand
ing an overbearing academic and extracurricular
schedule, two or three times a week at a movie
house at about 4 p.m. Why? Because my genera
tion had been trained not to smoke at movies: It
was illegal to do so, and long vears of habit quieted
the itch in the lung while Greta Garbo or Hum
phrey Bogart distracted us from our pain But
when the movie was over — the sun was down, and
I could resume smoking.
The purpose of this autobiographical exercise is
to remind our scientists, so many of them removed
from the traffic of human experience, that one of
the reasons we so much deplore cigarette smoking
is that it is an addition. The doctors tell us that if
smokers could be persuaded to limit themselves to
10 cigarettes per dav, the human system could ab
sorb the poison.
Unhappily, even knowing this to be the case, the
overwhelming majority of our smokers exceed this
limit by a factor of 100. 200. 300. 400 — 500 per
cent, and more. It is one thing to deplore that thev
should do so, quite another calmly to inform them
that effective tne first day of next month they are
to give up smoking on a seven-hour flight from
New York to Anchorage. You simply cannot do
that to people who are smokers, not without turn
ing airplane travel into torture.
When the news was given that the academy was
going to make that recommendation, there were
interviews taken on the streets, and many rejoiced.
One woman said on television, “It’s about time?”
But that is to express a distaste for smoking, which
is perfectly legitimate One harbors a distaste for
many things — some people don’t like dogs, cats,
obesity, bad grammar, film violence, film non-vio
lence But the American protocol permits us to
be our potty little selves.
On what reasoning do the scientists rely? Well,
they tell you, air circulation inside an airplane isn't
sufficient to contain the smoke within the narrow
area of the smoker, and therefore some of it drifts
out to annoy passengers, and to damage, poten
cy
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tially, flight personnel. The first problem is rather
ilv
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easily coped with: Those with high allergy to
smoke can recommend seats far removed from the
smokers’ section. As for the flight attendants, the
study by the academy is not likely to document a
noxious impact on the health of passengers by
passing through an area in which people are smok
ing 15 davs per month, for three four hours. It is
likely that the same people expose themselves to
the same concentration of smoke at restaurants,
playing bridge or poker with their friends, or in
deed inhaling their spouses' smoke or, for that
matter, smoking themselves.
It is when the third reason for forbidding smok
ing is cited that skepticism gives way to cynicism.
That reason is to diminish the danger of fire on
board an airplane. The statistics are not handy, but
if the honorable scientists can come up with a sin
gle fatality caused by someone having set a tobacco
fire to a (ommercigl airliner, I hope they will fea
ture this in their report
Me, 1 would rather once in a lifetime (in a far
advanced lifetime — of perpetual flying, I have yet
to see a fire aboard a plane) be aboard a plane dur
ing a little shoot-out with a cigarette-caused fire in
the comer of a cushion than be on every flight with
50 or 100 haunted souls choking for a snort of the
weed and taking out their ill humor on friendly
folk like thee and me.
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