Everybody Can't Get Stoned
"The command of the old despotisims," says O'Brien in Nineteen Eighty-Four, "was 'Thou shalt not'. The command of the totalitarians was 'Thou shalt'. Our command is 'Thou art'." As a report from the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics suggests, the tools to go that last route in the War on Some Drug Users are coming: Don't want your citizens altering their minds in scary ways? Hey, just render them physically incapable of doing so. I'll confess, I'm on the fence when it comes to using this stuff on, say, people who've repeatedly committed violent crimes under the influence of some drug, but the potential for wider application is both obvious and disturbing.
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