A new Paradigm

So in recent weeks I have been pondering issues that are being addressed in the election, although some are not. And one of the odd angles comes from the big news at the end of the week last week. Anyway from one of the links I posted last week comes the biggest issue/quandaries we face as a country.

How do we change our country and/or culture so we don't live in fear? How do we change things so a kid who does everything right doesn't have to worry about being gunned down in his front yard just because he's black and the passers by are Hispanic?

I do not have all of the answers but I have been pondering some and one of them was flippantly suggested in a forum I frequent last week, and in light of recent events is maybe not so shocking. With all the brouhaha last week about Elliot Spitzer and the prostitute there has been a kind of groundswell for legalizing prostitution. And I wonder if that might be the case for some of the other criminal acts that lead to the problems we see in our country.

From a non moralistic point of view (and I won't discount that is important) legalizing a number of crimes in this country might really change a few things. Prostitution for example, legalizing it would likely make it a much safer proposition for all involved, and could produce a new revenue stream through taxation of services.

In some cases legalization is not the answer, the drug or practice is just too harmful. But in some of those cases maybe a decriminalization of minor possession would help. Too often police look for any small amount of an illegal drugs as an excuse to hold somebody over and/or threaten them, resulting in higher incarceration rates for minor non violent offenses.

The goal of all of this would be to break the back of the stranglehold violent gangs have in this country. Take away or reduce their revenue and they start to lose their reason for being. I have been watching the History channel show: Gangland, and in pretty much every case the gangs survival can be traced to criminal activity, and their biggest source of income is drugs. Take that away and they lose their allure of easy money. It's a lot harder to maintain rackets like protection, or burglary rings etc. and easier for the police to bring down.

I have no vested interest here, I personally don't do any drugs now and only occasionally dabbled while in college. But I do want my children to grow up in a world where they don't read stories about promising young men or women being gunned down for no reason because of a drug war. And I don't think the current approach is working. Spending trillions of dollars fighting to prop up a foreign government while our own cities are falling apart is nonsensical and that is where we are right now. We need a shift in our priorities and a new political paradigm.