Bob responds to the Sunday Sermon: War Without End, Amen, & the red-white-and-bluelag

Letters to the Editor
letterstoeditor@dallasnews.com
The Dallas Morning News
Dallas, Texas

To the Editor:

"At the End of the Line" (8 July) was a great Sunday sermon, full of sin, blame, guilt, fire, brimstone, and a scattergun blast of hypocrisy aimed at everyone but the self-righteous, pure and blameless preacher.

As I trembled in the pew, I wondered what the author's point was: To lessen the damage associated with illegal drug use, or to show us sinners the way to Heaven?

If the former, how's the preacher's plan been working for Texas, America and the world since the War On Drugs -- America's political and legislative translation of sin into felony crime and mass imprisonment -- was declared thirty-odd years ago?

The Department of Justice's latest stats were just released, and the Land of the Free continues, aggressively, to be the world's largest prison system, with 2,245,189 children, women (currently the fastest-growing segment) and men behind bars as of June 2006. Most of that explosive growth is due to the sinners who are the War on Drugs' POWs.

About 53 percent of them committed non-violent sins that were adult and mutually consentual -- they traded drugs for money, and walked away satisfied.

Blacks must sin more than Hispanics, and Hispanics more than whites, because close to one in every 20 black men are behind bars, one of every 50 Hispanic men are locked up, but just seven of every 1000 white men were tossed into our gulag.

Your preacher's War On Drugs has sent these 2.2 million souls directly to Hell, without passing Go. And this locked-up bunch is the most dramatic surge of the red-white-and-bluelag since the incarcerated class of June 2000.

President Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Treasury and State, the economist, business leader and Hoover Institution fellow George P. Shultz, ceaselessly preaches that whenever people will pay for any substance the government bans, someone will always manufacture, smuggle, supply and profit from it. At his side spreading this historically proven and very different Gospel Truth was Nobel economist Milton Friedman.

Your sermon -- so blissfully innocent of our failed, faith-based Noble Experiment with alcohol Prohibition (1920-1933), and its epidemic of gang violence and police and political corruption -- demands us sinners cure America's drug problems by taking personal responsibility, rejecting hypocrisy, sinning no more, and awaiting our reward in Heaven. It's chapter and verse from the 35-year-old Gospel of the Drug Czar, first preached to an America with a tiny fraction of the drug use, gang violence, and public-health problems filling our gulag today.

Prisoners are ten times more likely than non-prisoners to contract the blood-borne diseases HIV/AIDS and hepatitis. After their richly deserved torment in our living Hells, nearly all of them will be released -- to infect the non-sinning community.

Tomorrow is Monday. Perhaps your editorial page can climb down from its self-righteous holy mountain with sane ideas that might actually reflect reality. Today's sermon had the racial stench of Hell on Earth, more police, more prisons, War Without End, Amen -- and a guarantee of more illegal drug use and a sicker Texas and America.

Robert Merkin
Northampton, Massachusetts

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The Dallas Morning News (Dallas, Texas USA)
Sunday 8 July 2007

Editorial:
At the End of the Line

We hate to be a drag about recreational drug use, but hypocrisy can be such a bummer.

Take, for example, the vegetarian, leather-free, anti-globalization activist who bristles at the thought of killing a cow and yet thinks nothing of lighting up a joint in her college dorm room -- just like her parents did. Consider the twentysomething law clerk who sees no problem partying late into the night with a snort or two of cocaine.

There's no telling how many people reading these words have been there, done that and never thought twice about the human misery behind recreational drugs. Unless users actually want to make the world a more dangerous place, there's no way they can justify the violence and bloodshed they're helping to fund.

According to the 2007 U.N. world drug report, nearly half of all cocaine produced in the world is consumed in North America. Texas ranks among the highest-usage areas, along with New York, Florida and New England. Although adolescent cocaine use in America is declining, statistics show that casual use among young adults remains steady. In Europe, it's rising.

Now take a sober look at the trail of death in countries where cocaine, heroin and marijuana are produced.

In Colombia, guerrillas and paramilitary thugs are vying for control of vast swaths of the countryside where base ingredients of cocaine and heroin are grown. They are tearing up families, killing adults and turning children into warriors -- all for drug money.

The Taliban in Afghanistan -- the same group that hosted al-Qaeda -- is using opium profits to fund its insurgency.

In Mexico, rival cartels are turning entire cities into war zones. Drug-related violence is at record highs.

Closer to home, the tattooed gang members rampaging through Oak Cliff and East Dallas also are the local enforcers and street distributors for major drug cartels. They make "cheese," sinsemilla marijuana, ecstasy and methamphetamine available to students in our local schools and universities.

Still seem like harmless, victimless good fun? Think again -- after washing the blood from your hands.

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