Radio Derb Is On The Air: Boehner Gets An Earful, Death Of An Addict, Etc

By John Derbyshire

02/15/2014

As a podcast on iTunes, listenable/downloadable onscreen at Taki’s Magazine, or as a transcript here.

In the title segment of this week’s broadcast I mention the passing of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman. After scoffing at the notion that addiction is an “illness,” I unmask myself as not a total drug libertarian:

Addiction is just a style of self-destructive behavior, with roots probably part innate, part environmental. Think of all the people like me who have never tried any serious narcotic. Some proportion of us, if we did try it, would become addicts, because of some predisposition in the genes that shape personality. The predisposition is the innate part; the opportunity to try it the environmental part.

That’s the case for making it difficult and socially disapproved to even try narcotics — a case for keeping them illegal. I agree with that case so far as serious narcotics like heroin are concerned.

The full Radio Derb playbill:

• Boehner gets an earful. (If there is hope, it lies in the comment threads.)
• Winter Olympics anti-commentary. (Where were ? and ??)
• Death of an addict. (You can’t want what you want.)
• Afghans on the make. (We’re still there — and they’re here.)
• Solution to global warming: foreign aid! (Elite condescension on flagrant display.)
• Big Oil embraces global warming. (If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.)
• Jay Leno, I hardly knew ye. (Not edgy enough for the hip elites.)
• If Stalin had staged an Olympics. (How to fill those stadiums.)
• Where you SHOULD have been born. (Pining for the fjords.)
• Your papers, please. (To march against photo i.d., bring photo i.d.)
• Life in pink. (One of the half-dozen best.)

It’s all there at Taki’s Magazine.

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