This isn’t really a versus, it is more a verbal beat down from Daniel Hannan, Conservative MEP for South East England, to Britian’s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. The man speaks truth to power and tells it like it is.

The war on drugs has never and will never reach its objective to fixing the drug problem. It only creates new problems while making the existing drug problem worse. In a CNN editorial, Jeffrey A. Miron, a senior lecturer in economics at Harvard University, says that we should legalize drugs to stop the violence.

“Prohibition creates violence because it drives the drug market underground. This means buyers and sellers cannot resolve their disputes with lawsuits, arbitration or advertising, so they resort to violence instead.

Violence was common in the alcohol industry when it was banned during Prohibition, but not before or after.”

It is almost second nature for people to want government to enact laws forbidding behaviors, substances, or activities that they won’t agree with. This has mostly to do with the “government is the solution” mentality. In reality, government is not the solution. This is why prohibition of alcohol failed so miserably in the 1920′s.

“The right policy, therefore, is to legalize drugs while using regulation and taxation to dampen irresponsible behavior related to drug use, such as driving under the influence. This makes more sense than prohibition because it avoids creation of a black market. This approach also allows those who believe they benefit from drug use to do so, as long as they do not harm others.”

This is the sensible policy because the war on drugs is never going to eliminate the use of drugs. Those who want to use drugs are still going to use drugs. The only outcome of the war on drugs is death as black markets are created.

“The U.S. repealed Prohibition of alcohol at the height of the Great Depression, in part because of increasing violence and in part because of diminishing tax revenues.”

Although I would rather see sensible policies enacted and a respect for Liberty displayed when we aren’t in an economic sinkhole, I’ll accept it anyway. Perhaps the government will be forced to legalize drugs in an attempt to generate more revenue in a quickly shrinking economy.

I was going to go to bed and perhaps have an early rise in the morning but, I decided to surf Facebook and found myself tagged to a note on someone’s thoughts about capitalism. I had debated this person on the topic of Obama’s economic policies in the recent past. What was obvious from the debate is that I am in support of Liberty and freedom and he is in support of central planning and big government.

It is certainly not rare to have big government supporters in the State or city of New York. Since Obama has become President, I have become more and more a fish out of water when it comes to political debates. Where everyone was against Bush’s idiotic policies, no one dares criticize the Messiah’s idiotic policies. The scariest thing is that they don’t see the similarities.

I consider myself a student of Mises and have learned a great deal from economists, philosophers, and statesman–not statists–who are knowledgeable of his work. While Mises has long ago refuted Marx, it has not stopped the boneheaded Marxian ideas from spreading.

So, while every centrally planned form of government has failed since Marx and before Marx, we are still debating whether a free society is the best one to live in. It was Einstein who defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. In that sense, all Marxists are insane–and so are their policies.

My motivation to write this instead of sleep was from a Facebook note. This note came about because of a quote I posted by Henry Hazlitt:

“The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are.”

The author of the Facebook note was outraged. Before I had read this note, I did not know the author was a Marxist. I knew he supported big government and believed it to be a good idea to steal from one group to give to another–in this case it was stealing from the poor to give to the rich or what is known as bailouts.

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Few people can explain sound economics as well as Peter Schiff. He explains why the stimulus is garbage and that the result of all this government spending is going to result in an inflationary depression.

New estimates show that Obama’s budget would generate deficits averaging $1 trillion a year for 10 years. That is a lot of red. The White House insisted that these massive deficits will not put a damper on its already costly agenda–how is that going to work?

So much for Obama’s plan to cut the budget deficit in half by 2013! The more likely scenario is that we are going to double the budget deficit or if the estimates are correct, continue them.

“Worst of all, CBO says the deficit under Obama’s policies would never go below 4 percent of the size of the economy, figures that economists agree are unsustainable. By the end of the decade, the deficit would exceed 5 percent of gross domestic product, a dangerously high level.”

These deficits are obviously unsustainable and dangerously high! How can we add $9.3 trillion dollars in deficits to the national debt? This is not a time to be spending frivilously. We need to save and underconsume. There are no means to pay off the debt we already have if we keep spending.

Of course, Obama refuses to cut back on any of his pet projects “investments”.

“What we will not cut are investments that will lead to real growth and prosperity over the long term,” Obama said. “That’s why our budget makes a historic commitment to comprehensive health care reform. That’s why it enhances America’s competitiveness by reducing our dependence on foreign oil and building a clean energy economy.”

“It doesn’t change what the president’s focus is, in terms of his objectives in making critical investments, and doesn’t change his ability to halve the deficit in four years,” said White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.

Right. This won’t change his ability to halve the deficit in four years? What funny math is he using? In Obamaland, reducing the deficit means adding to it!

Obama is going to spend the United States dollar and economy into an early grave.