The War on Inanimate Objects
The nice thing about waging war on inanimate objects like drugs or poverties, is that nobody gets hurt. Sometimes when I think about The War on Drugs, I imagine DEA agents surrounding a house, barging through the door, and pointing their assault rifles on little baggies of marijuana or vials of cocaine.
Ridiculous right? Of course it’s ridiculous. The war on drugs isn’t a war on drugs at all; it’s a war on people. People who often find often themselves dead or in jail for the supposed crime of voluntary exchange.
And so language is twisted until it loses its meaning. I wonder how long it is before the anti-immigration movement cooks up some dehumanizing term for immigration. Will it be the war on illegality? How about the the war on border violation? The war on cheap labor? As you can see, I’m no good at this game.
And in this way we can begin another unwinnable war against our fellow humans–in this case Mexicans, Salvadorans, and others who have the extraordinarily bad luck of being born next to, but not within, the most prosperous nation in the history of the world.