BE WARY OF 'WARS' ON SOCIAL PROBLEMS

They Usually Become Freedom-Squeezing Government Programs.

President Barack Obama's new drug czar, R. Gil Kerlikowske, said in a
recent interview that we need to abandon the phrase, "war on drugs."
The Los Angeles Times offered editorial support, arguing that "[t]he
phrase itself shaped flawed thinking and yielded disastrous policies."

Recognizing that framing the drug issue in terms of war distorts our
understanding and, with it, our responses, is insightful. However,
there are a host of other government-sponsored domestic "wars" to
which that same argument applies, yet the policies and programs
adopted to fight those wars are more often escalated than abandoned.

It is ironic that there is widespread opposition to real wars,
because of their adverse consequences, yet politicians and their
backers like to call every new domestic policy initiative of theirs a
war, in order to galvanize support. In fact, war imagery may be the
most commonly abused analogy in politics.

We have heard that "war is hell," "all's fair in love and war," and
"war is politics by other means." We heard that the 1970s oil crisis
was the moral equivalent of war (although government price controls
did far more damage than OPEC). And government wars have been
declared not just on drugs, but on everything from crime to poverty
to illiteracy.

Unfortunately, the imagery of urgency, resolve and "giving all we've
got" for the good of the country doesn't match the policies actually
implemented or their effects on taxpayers' pockets and citizens'
liberties. Rather, declarations of such "wars" are often just
dramatic rhetoric used to promote politicians' pet programs. Further,
those programs often do far more harm than good, such as the vast
invasions of property and privacy, as well as increases in violence
and corruption, triggered by the war on drugs.

War imagery is invoked to show determination to win. But shooting
wars have no winners; just those who lose more and those who lose
less as casualties Mount. However, the casualties caused are the last
thing social "war on X" supporters ever discuss, although any honest
evaluation would find many casualties, as with large public housing
projects that became instant slums or the litany of failed training
programs during the war on poverty.

"Real" wars are against people who intend to harm us. But domestic
policy wars target the social consequences of actions of citizens,
who America was created to protect, made necessary by scarcity, which
we cannot eliminate. They cannot be won in the same way. When such
wars cannot be won, we should abandon war rhetoric that can only mislead us.

Because of its powerful emotional impact, war imagery and language is
also used in other ways that would make George Orwell proud.

We hear of trade wars, in language implying that they are contests
between domestic and foreign producers, so that protectionism for
"our" firms against "their" firms sounds sensible. However, both
buyers and sellers expect to gain by trading, or they would not
voluntarily participate, so that trade creates wealth (which is why
every defensible study of protectionism finds that it destroys
wealth). Protectionism, in fact, is an alliance between domestic
producers and the government, declaring war on consumers to force
them to pay higher prices.

Many public servants declare war to "solve" every domestic crisis
(often caused by their "solutions" to earlier alleged crises). But
those policy wars are never won. Rather than being abandoned,
however, programs created through war rhetoric tend to not just
persist, but grow, expanding government encroachment on our shrinking
freedoms, with increasingly adverse effects. Expanding government
intervention in innumerable areas of our lives because politicians
declare every problem a war cannot stand up to careful examination.