So I Guess It's Alright Then
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Representative Patrick Kennedy admits he was voluntarily intoxicated when he crashed his car, supposedly on his way to a House vote at 2:30 in the morning:
"Intoxicated" is not synonymous with "drunk." "Intoxicated" means, well, in-toxic-ated: that there is stuff in your body that shouldn't normally be there, and that causes you to be in a state other than your normal self.
Taking a sleep-inducing prescription drug and getting behind the wheel is not only criminal negligence, it's criminal recklessness — all voluntary intoxication is per se recklessness, at least under the Model Penal Code.
But Kennedy's blood alcohol content would have been zero (assuming he's telling the truth). And blood alcohol content is increasingly all that many people, including many libertarians, seem to care about anymore. They don't seem to care about actual risks. They don't seem to care about actual conduct. All they care about is their "right" to a personal, subjective standard of conduct rather than the objective, reasonable person standard that prevails throughout all other branches of the law — their "right" to have just two beers, or just two Ambien. To many libertarians, BAC is to be treated not as a floor (i.e., a sufficient condition to show impairment), but as a ceiling (i.e., a safe harbor beneath which any and all conduct is excused, because you're "not too drunk").
Meanwhile, the fact that we are talking about hurling a multi-ton slab of metal down public roads at potentially lethal speeds somehow gets lost in the debate.
Any libertarian who condemns Kennedy's pathetic conduct, while at the same time denouncing zero-tolerance DUI laws, is intellectually inconsistent and, arguably, a hypocrite.
Rep. Patrick Kennedy says he'd taken a prescription anti-nausea drug that can cause drowsiness, but consumed no alcohol, before crashing his car near the Capitol.This is what happens when people, including libertarians, start worshiping at the false god of blood alcohol content, as I've tried to explain repeatedly.
...
Kennedy said that after working Wednesday evening he went home and took "prescribed" amounts of Phenergan and Ambien, another drug that he sometimes takes to fall asleep.
"Intoxicated" is not synonymous with "drunk." "Intoxicated" means, well, in-toxic-ated: that there is stuff in your body that shouldn't normally be there, and that causes you to be in a state other than your normal self.
Taking a sleep-inducing prescription drug and getting behind the wheel is not only criminal negligence, it's criminal recklessness — all voluntary intoxication is per se recklessness, at least under the Model Penal Code.
But Kennedy's blood alcohol content would have been zero (assuming he's telling the truth). And blood alcohol content is increasingly all that many people, including many libertarians, seem to care about anymore. They don't seem to care about actual risks. They don't seem to care about actual conduct. All they care about is their "right" to a personal, subjective standard of conduct rather than the objective, reasonable person standard that prevails throughout all other branches of the law — their "right" to have just two beers, or just two Ambien. To many libertarians, BAC is to be treated not as a floor (i.e., a sufficient condition to show impairment), but as a ceiling (i.e., a safe harbor beneath which any and all conduct is excused, because you're "not too drunk").
Meanwhile, the fact that we are talking about hurling a multi-ton slab of metal down public roads at potentially lethal speeds somehow gets lost in the debate.
Any libertarian who condemns Kennedy's pathetic conduct, while at the same time denouncing zero-tolerance DUI laws, is intellectually inconsistent and, arguably, a hypocrite.
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Posted by Kip on
5 May 2006
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