The fascinating thing about drugs is, that it turns Left into Right and vice versa and swaps the core concepts those political sides hold dear.
The Left has a fetish for central planning and nannying and the good of the collective over that of the individual, whereas the Right has a longstanding libertarian tradition, where people are responsible for themselves and the freedom of the individual to choose is paramount, that is, they allow and expect people to organise and police themselves as a core principle of their philosophy.
Whilst large parts of the Left are suddenly championing personal responsibility and freedoms and complete drugs legalisation, the Right suddenly turns Maoist and demands that individuals sacrifice personal freedoms and takes away personal responsibility to replace it with a diktat to yield to the greater good.
Weird, huh?
I see it as an opportunity to turn lefties into natural conservatives since for once they actually have made an intellectual start here on the road to recovery *snicker* and also, as an chance to question the Right's adherence to core principles because every time they drop them and go all pseudo-socialist on everyone, this is when everything else goes to (ahem) pot for them(as it always does for anyone dabbling in lefty strategies).
The drugs debate is only a symptom of a malaise that started about 40 years ago where Left and Right no longer define themselves properly but started to borrow from each other -- which means they are turning into the one and the same side (and we already have our democracy almost completely hijacked by a professional political class) and so, without the differences, no policing (and renewal by challenge) of either philosophy is taking place, and the principles are rotting from within through constant compromise.
My favorite politician, a guy called Roland Koch has recently left politics for good, and other competent people who once were our great conservative talents have recently left the crumbling CDU which no longer has any principles (let alone conservative ones) at all on their agenda ever since IM Erika has taken them over... I really hope that those guys are going to form a new, proper conservative party that Germany deserves to have, if anyone can do it at all, they have the principles, culture and know-how to. Not saying they are perfect, but they are a darn side less confused than the others...
In the meanwhile, all we can do is play some Lou Reed in appreciation of the epic mess:
Ps.: The Tories in the UK are only one election away from this situation as well, maybe even less. Not much holds them together anymore on the principle side, the clear blue water has turned quite muddy in the past 20 years :(
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