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Jim Wallis’ Drug War Deceit

y William L. AndersonRecently by William L. Anderson: 'Progressive' Journalists and State Power 

The Drug War is a disgrace. The Drug War is racist, and the Drug War is evil.Few readers will disagree with these statements, or at least those readerswho already are inclined already to see the Drug War as being yet another government tool of oppression.

However, it is also possible for people to denounce the results of the DrugWar without attacking the underlying premises of that war, which is thatgovernment has the duty and must have the authority to carry out such warsfor "our own good." People who operate in that sphere thus condemn theDrug War while quietly supporting it at the same time, and those are the

people for whom I have the most contempt, because they quietly support thisabomination in a most insidious fashion.

I recently received an email from Sojourners which on the surface seems toattack the Drug War. It reads:

Blacks and whites use drugs at about the same rate, yet African Americansare 10 times more likely to be imprisoned for drug offenses. This is theunbalanced and inhumane effect of America’s "war on drugs" – a dirty secret

that nobody wants to talk about. The discriminatory treatment of minority drugusers has been virtually ignored by the media, politicians, and the rest of us.

But this month Sojourners is taking on the truth about America’s justicesystem, where the color of your skin determines your sentence. Subscribenow to read "Cruel and Unequal" in the February issue of Sojourners.(Emphasis theirs)

There is nothing in that paragraph that is untrue, except for the claim that theracial discrimination in this situation "has been virtually ignored." In fact, this

injustice has been front-and-center for a long time in the media.The problem is not that the racial disparities of the Drug War areignored, but rather that they provide moral theater for the Left instead of beinga reason to abolish the Drug War altogether.

In other words, I am making a serious accusation against Wallis and others of his ilk, for I am saying that far from being a voice against oppression by thestate, he and his allies are using the issue simply for fundraising purposesand have no intention of seeing that anyone deals with the larger and

underlying issues. Black Americans imprisoned for "drug crimes" are nothingmore than props in Wallis’ show of religious statism.

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While I don’t read the Sojourners page every day or even every week,nonetheless I read it enough (and go back over the "God’s Politics" blog onthe Sojourners website) to know that I never have seen one realcondemnation of the Drug War itself. Furthermore, I never have read anyoneon that site condemning the tactics that government agents use to further this

war.

Before going back to Wallis and the Drug War, I will say that there are thingsabout Sojourners that I like. For example, Wallis’ recent post on how to bringdown the federal deficit has much in it with which I agree. First, he calls for ahuge reduction in military spending, including ending the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. He also calls for an end to agricultural subsidies.

And even though he calls for an increase in the top income tax rate back to39.6 percent, he makes some admissions that really are shocking tosomeone who has been reading Wallis’ writings since the mid-1970s:

Second, return tax rates for the wealthy back to Clinton-era levels of 39.6percent from the Bush top level of 35 percent. Under Dwight D. Eisenhower,the top marginal tax rate was 91 percent – that was clearly too high. FromJFK until Reagan it was 70 percent and that was still too high.But, when Warren Buffet declares it wrong that his secretarypays a larger portion of her income in taxes than he does as a multi-billionaire, our tax system is now clearly imbalanced. There are now more

millionaires living in New York City than there were in 2007 before the crash.Maybe they could pitch in.

Keep in mind that few people howled more than Wallis in 1981 whenCongress voted to lower the top rate from 70 percent to 50 percent. Perhapshis thinking is different today, or perhaps he has a selective memory.

Unfortunately, Wallis does seem to have a selective memory on other things.Last year, he became involved in a very public spat with Marvin Olasky, editor of the conservative evangelical news/commentary publication World over whether or not Sojourners had received grants from George Soros’ OpenSociety Institute.

Because the OSI promotes abortion on demand and atheism, it would raisesome eyebrows if a Christian organization calling itself "pro-life" (although themain "pro-life" emphasis comes through promotion of a huge, tax-fundedwelfare state) were to receive money, and according to Olasky’s article,Sojourners received $275,000 from OSI during the last decade. Wallis’response was even more eye-opening when during an interview about the

alleged donation, he declared: "It’s not hyperbole or overstatement to say thatGlenn Beck lies for a living. I’m sad to see Marvin Olasky doing the samething. No, we don’t receive money from Soros."

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Wallis went on: "We don’t receive money from George Soros. Our books aretotally open, always have been. Our money comes fromChristians who support us and who read Sojourners. That’s where it comesfrom."

Olasky kept digging and he found the tax records, as well as other documentsthat proved beyond a doubt that Wallis was not telling the truth. (After beingconfronted with the evidence, Wallis changed his public statements andclaimed that his outburst came as a result of fatigue and a faulty memory.)

Now, Soros has made public statements against the Drug War, but I reallyhave seen very little from either the Secular Left or the Religious Left thatdeals with the heart of the matter: people like Wallis want government tocontinue to have the powers that it uses to continue the Drug War, but theywant the racial makeup of people who are arrested and imprisoned to bechanged. In other words, they want a Politically Correct Drug War.

I agree that it is a national disgrace that so many black Americans are caughtup in the maw of this sorry policy, and that huge numbers of them are throwninto prison. Furthermore, I wrote more than 10 years ago about the problemof Drug War-related racial profiling and noted that the larger issue is not racialin and of itself, but rather the abuses of government power.

Unfortunately, Wallis attacks the hot-button portion of the Drug War – its

deleterious effect upon black Americans – but stops there. Why? My sense isthat the kind of welfare state that Wallis demands is one in which thegovernment must enjoy total power over the lives of individuals. Agovernment that controls the entire medical care apparatus and regulatesliterally everything in a person’s life (and that is exactly the kind of state thatWallis and his allies have been demanding for decades) must have the power and authority to do those things.

Lest anyone think that I am exaggerating, keep in mind that Wallis over the

years has held up some of the most brutal regimes in history asguiding lights to the kind of government that would make lifebetter. Wallis championed Mao during the worst years of the Cultural

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Revolution and he and others actually believed that the Great Leap Forwardwas actually an economic advance as opposed to a murderous time when the Chinese state literally crushed the life out of millions of people.

So, given that Wallis has supported government brutality in the past without

apology, I do not see him recoiling from the powers being used by the statetoday to subjugate people under the auspices of the Drug War. He does nothave a problem with the use of state violence; his only problem is that toomany black Americans are caught up in the war itself, and for "justice" tooccur, more whites have to be arrested.

This is not justice; it is shared misery. Instead of questioning why people haveto be crushed by the state in the name of keeping us safe from illegal drugs,Wallis wants to know why there are racial disparities in the vast numbers of people being arrested and imprisoned. That is even worse than PETA’s claimthat milk is a "racist" drink.

To make matters worse, Wallis has fought anything that would present theinner-city neighborhoods the opportunity to become livable places wheredrugs are not the main source of commerce. From his "living wage" crusadesthat force up wages to levels where it becomes impossible to employ youngAfrican-Americans to his support for policies that undermine private propertyrights, Wallis is utterly anti-enterprise and anti-entrepreneur, and anti-capitalism.

There is a reason that I never have read any arguments by Wallis or hisfriends that condemn the Drug War per se: they are loathe to abandon their belief that an all-powerful state can and should be worshipped, as it is theVery Essence of God. If too many African-Americans are arrested, thenchange the racial makeup of the arrest policies, but don’t stop the Drug War,by any means.

You see, if we actually ended the Drug War, state power also would suffer defeat. And if there is anything Wallis worships, it is state power.

January 7, 2011

William L. Anderson, Ph.D. [ send him mail  ], teaches economics at Frostburg State University in Maryland, and is an adjunct scholar of the Ludwig vonMises Institute. He also is a consultant with American Economic Services.Visit his blog. 

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part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

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