PRESTOPUNDIT -- "It's a team sport, baby!"

Randy Barnett reads Bill Bennett the riot act:

Bennett's behavior also reveals something more insidious than hypocrisy, though it is a very old tale. Those who argue most loudly that, were it not for state coercion, people would go to hell in a hand basket have long been suspected of speaking knowingly from introspection. Think Jimmy Swaggart. Bennett provides an even better example. Bennett has had three consumptive vices of which we know: cigarettes (which he had to give up to take the drug-czar position), gambling (which he now has to give up to preserve his viability on the lecture circuit as virtue authority) and, obviously, food. In his latest admissions he stresses that he broke no laws, which is also true of his consumption of nicotine and calories. Lucky him.

This only means that his vices do not carry the additional legal baggage that he would willingly impose on others with different vices. So suppose, instead of merely issuing a statement that he was through with gambling, he had to hire a big-time lawyer (other than his brother), and go to court in handcuffs like Robert Downey Jr. has had to do. Downey is a sad character, but why does he deserve the orange jumpsuit and jail-time for his admittedly self-destructive behavior and Bennett only our compassion and goodwill?

Perhaps Bennett (or Kurtz) would respond that, were Bennett's chosen vices illegal, the laws would have saved him from himself. But this incident proves only that, unless one prohibits all vices, which the virtue proponents like Bennett deny they favor, poor weak souls like Bennett will find some other legal pleasure to abuse. The only question is what happens to them when they are caught. For the average citizen smoking marijuana, they get the tender mercies of such places as the Circuit Court of Cook County where I used to prosecute real criminals. In California and elsewhere, they get both the Clinton and Bush justice departments prosecuting as felons sick people acting legally under state law.

Naturally, Bennett opposes medical-cannabis initiatives. In a 2001 Wall Street Journal essay he dismissed them "as little more than thinly veiled legalization efforts." So much for his compassion for the suffering of others, not to mention his ability to make morally relevant distinctions. Here is where Kurtz's defense of Bennett based on positive law unravels completely. In what universe does opposition to medical cannabis under sanction of state law and subject to state regulation create even close to the social harms caused by legal gambling? But Bennett is not interested in such nuances. He disregards the judgment of the electorate of at least eight states who voted to allow this practice. He knows better than the voters. Just ask him. He advocates punishing sick people and denying them access to physician-recommended medical cannabis just so other people do not get high.

Frankly, I just do not see the virtue in this position, much less the compassion Kurtz and Frum show Bennett, who has only to withstand a bit of the verbal abuse he dishes so well. All this is why some libertarians think this latest admission of Bennett's vices significant and worthy of criticism, not whitewash.

Posted by Greg Ransom