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Comment by arca_vorago | Hacker News Reader

It's because so many people don't know, forgot, or choose to ignore that the US was founded on enlightenment principles of individualism. So they always say stuff about some amorphous "social contract" to focus on what is essentially thought-crime, saying "let's stop them before they do the thing that then induces them to commit the crime" instead of just prosecuting them for the crime.

Talking like this frames the narrative and too many of us let these anti-american rhetorical tricks pass without calling it out.

The government has no right to tell me what I can and can't put in my body, whether that's lettuce, Devils lettuce, a cigar, or a soda... doesn't matter.

It's a matter of individual freedom.

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It's because so many people don't know, forgot, or choose to ignore that the US was founded on enlightenment principles of individualism.

Unless you were a child, woman, native, or a slave, right? It also helped to own land.

Come on, we can be against prohibition for practical reasons without resorting to pining for a history which never existed,

I'm so tired of repeatedly hearing this trite and ridiculously myopic response every time someone brings the subject up. No one is ignoring the realities of history here except you.

First of all, lets just state the fact that the principles of a government can be different from the reality of it. The two aren't mutually exclusive. It's as if by mentioning the worst affected groups you think you magically negate the foundational principles just because the implementation wasn't (and isn't) perfect. It's also not to say the system is theoretically perfect, because it's not, but to use such a logically weak strawman ("pining for a history which never existed") and not even expanding whatsoever is intellectually lazy at best.

"Come on, we can be against prohibition for practical reasons"

The foundational principles of American individualism is the greatest practical reason to be against prohibition. What the hell do you think enabled us to finally get rid of the shackles around those disaffected groups in the first place? It was the hard work that mostly Madison put into researching all the various forms of government, and the greatest political thinkers from around the world, that established a structure that although imperfect would be able to improve over time.

Before we continue this, my main question is whether you are American or not. I find that my approach to this subject needs variation for my friends across the pond. If you are, you need to brush up on your civics.

> What the hell do you think enabled us to finally get rid of the shackles around those disaffected groups in the first place?

Other countries have banned slavery, and have enfranchised women, the poor, and people of colour many years before the United States did.

Those countries were not founded on any such principles, nor have they ever claimed that they were. How could they possibly achieve such progressive feats of emancipation?

It's possible to imagine that perhaps, the founding principles weren't of much help in this endeavor. In fact, there's a strong case to be made that none of these achievements had anything to do with the constitution, or the bill of rights, or anything else that the founding fathers wrote about, but did not actually implement - and everything to do with the zeitgeist of the times.

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