In Defense Of Mollie

I spent several hours re-reading George Orwell’s Animal Farm yesterday and I couldn’t escape the feeling of being pulled apart. On the one hand Orwell’s tale of how Stalinist Communism destroys the lives of it’s citizens is brilliant, on the other hand Orwell’s clear fondness for democratic Socialism remains frustrating. The character of Mollie perfectly represents the way even Orwell’s democratic Socialism crushes individuality and demands collectivist conformity. Orwell describes the white mare Mollie as,

“…the foolish, pretty white mare who drew Mr. Jones’s trap, came mincing daintily in, chewing at a lump of sugar. She took a place near the front and began flirting her white mane, hoping to draw attention to the red ribbons it was plaited with.”

Soon after the wise pig Old Major stirs the animals passions with a speech dripping in Socialist rhetoric (Old Major continually refers to the other animals as comrades throughout a speech that paints a picture of a farm without humans in which the animals keep all the products of their labor) the other pigs take hold of this idea, begin to flesh it out and start promoting this new philosophy (called Animalism) among the other animals. Mollie proves difficult to convince:

“At the beginning they met with much stupidity and apathy. Some of the animals talked of the duty of loyalty to Mr. Jones, whom they referred to as ‘Master,’ or made elementary remarks such as ‘Mr. Jones feeds us. If he were gone, we should starve to death.’ Others asked such questions as…’If this rebellion is to happen anyway, what difference does it make whether we work for it or not?’ and the pigs had great difficulty in making them see that this was contrary to the spirit of Animalism. The stupidest questions of all were asked by Mollie, the white mare. The very first question she asked Snowball was: ‘Will there still be sugar after the Rebellion?’

“‘No,’ said Snowball firmly. ‘We have no means of making sugar on this farm. Besides, you do not need sugar. You will have all the oats and hay you want.’”

But Mollie doesn’t want oats and hay, she wants sugar. In this “stupid question” Mollie shines a glaring light on the most basic problem with all Socialist states; they limit production, and thus choice, to that which the government deems best. In this case poor Mollie simply wants sugar, ribbons and the affection of humans, but the intellectually superior pigs have decided what is best for Mollie, oats and hay.

This attitude is alive and well in the American Left today. The regulation and taxation of cigarettes is based solely on the idea that the government knows what is best for you and I, as is gun control and any number of other Leftist schemes aimed at social control. And in academic circles any questioning of the validity of Leftist theories is generally met with a sort of elitist scorn; how could anyone ask such stupid questions as, “why should I hate the people and organizations that provide me with work and a salary?”

In the end what Leftists (and I include many of the neoconservatives in that label) fail to see is that all forms of Socialism, from the Bismarckian welfare state to Stalinist Communism, cannot help but crush individuality because they take the power of choice out of the individual’s hands and put it in the hands of the government. At best these systems foster a tyranny of the collective will, at worse they create vastly powerful dictatorial states.

And in animal far Animalism, like Socialism, was best for the stupid brutes. And so the pigs, being the elite, would go forward with their plans regardless of what Mollie or anyone else wanted; clearly she was simply to stupid to understand what was good for her.

And in much the same way Leftists remain frustrated to this day with blue collar workers who continually vote for Republicans, stupidly ‘voting against their own self interest’ as the Democrats say. They remain frustrated with the upper middle class who would rather vote for Republicans who will give them back their tax dollars (so they can buy that new car they’ve been eying) than vote for a Democrat who will surely raise their taxes; “don’t they understand the sacrifices we all must make for the cause?” Democrats protest.

It is this idea that intellectual elites know what is best for others, an idea that lays at the heart of all Leftist schemes, that is so detestable. Self-determination is our most basic right, the right on which all other rights rest, and it is this right that all forms of Socialism chip away at. We can only hope that something will soon deter the gradual degradation of this right or we might wake up one day to find it gone, a collectivist totalitarianism in its place.

Legalize It Man…All Of It (Part 1: The History of Hypocrisy)

Conservatives in America have developed an unfortunate image lately. The Religious Right’s growing ambition to go beyond protecting Christian’s rights to practice their religion as they please and begin writing their ethical and moral system into America’s laws (a ‘No Gays!’ Constitutional amendment? Really?!) along with a recent unpleasant streak of populism (read: socially conservative fascism) in the Republican party has cultivated this image.

The most prominently hypocritical result of this marriage of conservative religious fervor and Republican populism has manifested itself in the prohibitionist War on Drugs. In this first post on the War on Drugs I will lay out the basic early history of this ultimate hypocrisy.

Drug prohibition in the United States goes back to 1914 with the Harrison Narcotic Act which regulated the production and distribution of opiate containing substances. In the following years various regulations were laid upon various substances, the most famous of which of course was alcohol prohibition which started in 1919 and ended in 1933 with the 21st Amendment. But the War didn’t begin until June 17th, 1971.

On that summer day in 1971 then President Richard Nixon called substance abuse “public enemy number one in the United States” and declared the War on Drugs. This speech had come on the heels of the legislative declaration of War on Drugs, the Controlled Substances Act of 1970.

The Controlled Substances Act created a five tier classification system for all drugs, ranging from Schedule V substances which have a low potential for abuse and medical uses to Schedule I substance which have a high potential for abuse and no medical purpose; and everything in between.

The act also empowered the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs to enforce the law. In 1973 the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs was merged in the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). This was the birth of the DEA and the government’s prohibition of substances it deems dangerous.

As drug use continued to grow despite the efforts of the DEA, Ronald Reagan was elected by a country enthralled with Cocaine. Reagan took it upon himself to ramp up the War on Drugs while the First Lady flew around the country promoting her famous (or infamous) ‘Just Say No’ campaign encouraging children to say no to drugs, because otherwise they would be saying no to life.

Ever since that speech in 1971 Republicans have almost universally supported the War on Drugs; a war that cost nearly $45.5 billion in 2005 alone; a war that imprisons at least one million Americans a year; a war that has failed to reverse or even slow growing rates of drug use; a war on the individual’s freedom of self determination. Nothing could be more hypocritical. The GOP cannot continue to claim to be the party of small government while also supporting the criminalization of non-crimes committed in the privacy of a citizen’s own home.