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From: dmcanzi@watdcsu.UUCP (David Canzi)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Drug Abuse: True Problem/Media Hype - You Pay the Price
Message-ID: <2566@watdcsu.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 19-Sep-86 23:23:38 EDT
Article-I.D.: watdcsu.2566
Posted: Fri Sep 19 23:23:38 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 29-Sep-86 00:10:32 EDT
References: <720@scc.UUCP> <853@sigma.UUCP>
Reply-To: dmcanzi@watdcsu.UUCP (David Canzi)
Organization: Secular Humanist Conspiracy, Child Corruption Division
Lines: 19

The government can propose small reductions in the people's freedom as
a means to handle a variety of problems and/or things the people
perceive as problems, eg. recreational drug use, child abuse.  Then
anybody who opposes these reductions in freedom can be intimidated into
keeping their mouth shut by the threat of portraying them as being in
favour of what the law is intended to fight.

This is common enough in politics, eg.  people who support affirmative
action portray their opponents as being in favour of racism and sexism,
people who defend freedom of speech even for neo-nazis are accused of
being (or liking) neo-nazis, and so on.

As long as people's opinions can be so easily affected by such tactics,
the government will always be able to pick some emotional issue, and
propose legislation reducing the people's freedom in order to attack
the problem, and the people will support it.  The people, it appears,
can be made to demand the removal of their own freedom.
-- 
David Canzi