In many ways, for domestic stuff, I actually am in the liberty side of the Republican party. I basically favor minimal government regulation (minimal being regulation only when somebody else's Constitutional rights are being unquestionably infringed upon or when someone is clearly and physically endangered).
That being said, here's my take on performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) in sports. In fact, to get into the details, many of the PEDs are not illegal; rather, they are prescription based, and obviously these athletes generally don't have prescriptions. Thus, what this is is a failure of the government to enforce its own laws, and so it blames another organization and increases its power as a result. As with many things for which we have laws that pertain to fairly specific things, the law came about after the action was already illegal; the new statutes just made it "more" illegal. Think Columbine - what happened already violated over 20 laws, but inevitably new laws were passed that eroded civil liberties.
Now, that's not my major objection and this is where the slippery slope part comes in. I read the 10th Amendment (which I think is one of the most important amendments in there), and I wonder, where does the federal government conceivably get the power to tell a private business what its employment regulations should be, because after all that is what we're talking about here with steroids - private businesses relations with their "workers." If federal agents want to serve warrants against athletes who break prescription laws or take amphetamines, fine - those athletes would in fact be criminals - but the McCain bill is effectively the same thing as the federal government saying that the federal government should mandate that a restaurant fire an employee who doesn't wash his hands. The analogy works because the worker would have broken a law, but if the restaurant wants to keep him on, that's their business if they want to risk another fine. Enough of this could possibly lead to a standardization of federal regulation to the point where the federal government makes specific regulations for companies when they have done nothing wrong (as we already see to some degree with affirmative action).
As for the rest of the Republicans, YES! So, so many politicians in general follow the philosophy of, if I like the program, I support the legislation. That's not what their duty is. Their duty is to preserve the Constitution and the freedom of the American people. Thus, programs that may or may not be a good idea (like the national speed limit) don't even matter on merits; it's simply not allowed constitutionally for them to deal with it. I resent the spending runups we see from both parties because that signals big government to me. I am without a doubt an idealized Reagan Republican in that sense (a smaller federal government except for our foreign policy posture).
Finally, the other things that I don't like about McCain. Well, to begin with, his campaign finance reform was more of the same, but even more dangerous. What that did was limit free speech (in that it prevented people from promulgating certain opinions) in the arena where that is most dangerous: politics, i.e. the arena where bad people in office could limit our freedoms even more. I think that this is just one of many things where he supports a larger, more ominous federal government, and that's why I don't like him.
At any rate, I'd love to continue this, and let me know when you find out about living with us.
That being said, here's my take on performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) in sports. In fact, to get into the details, many of the PEDs are not illegal; rather, they are prescription based, and obviously these athletes generally don't have prescriptions. Thus, what this is is a failure of the government to enforce its own laws, and so it blames another organization and increases its power as a result. As with many things for which we have laws that pertain to fairly specific things, the law came about after the action was already illegal; the new statutes just made it "more" illegal. Think Columbine - what happened already violated over 20 laws, but inevitably new laws were passed that eroded civil liberties.
Now, that's not my major objection and this is where the slippery slope part comes in. I read the 10th Amendment (which I think is one of the most important amendments in there), and I wonder, where does the federal government conceivably get the power to tell a private business what its employment regulations should be, because after all that is what we're talking about here with steroids - private businesses relations with their "workers." If federal agents want to serve warrants against athletes who break prescription laws or take amphetamines, fine - those athletes would in fact be criminals - but the McCain bill is effectively the same thing as the federal government saying that the federal government should mandate that a restaurant fire an employee who doesn't wash his hands. The analogy works because the worker would have broken a law, but if the restaurant wants to keep him on, that's their business if they want to risk another fine. Enough of this could possibly lead to a standardization of federal regulation to the point where the federal government makes specific regulations for companies when they have done nothing wrong (as we already see to some degree with affirmative action).
As for the rest of the Republicans, YES! So, so many politicians in general follow the philosophy of, if I like the program, I support the legislation. That's not what their duty is. Their duty is to preserve the Constitution and the freedom of the American people. Thus, programs that may or may not be a good idea (like the national speed limit) don't even matter on merits; it's simply not allowed constitutionally for them to deal with it. I resent the spending runups we see from both parties because that signals big government to me. I am without a doubt an idealized Reagan Republican in that sense (a smaller federal government except for our foreign policy posture).
Finally, the other things that I don't like about McCain. Well, to begin with, his campaign finance reform was more of the same, but even more dangerous. What that did was limit free speech (in that it prevented people from promulgating certain opinions) in the arena where that is most dangerous: politics, i.e. the arena where bad people in office could limit our freedoms even more. I think that this is just one of many things where he supports a larger, more ominous federal government, and that's why I don't like him.
At any rate, I'd love to continue this, and let me know when you find out about living with us.
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