Europe has a long tradition of fighting narcotic drugs, with varying results. In 1992, the city of Zürich, Switzerland, closed the infamous ‘Needle Park’ area, just behind the national museum and the central railway station. For a few years in the late 1980s and early 1990s,
hundreds of dealers and addicts packed into the park, [with] many people desperately needing urgent medical care on a daily basis.
As a curious tourist, I visited the place about a year before it was closed. I was shocked at the complete and utter lack of dignity among those who basically spent their entire lives there. Human beings had turned into empty shells, consumed and hollowed out by their addiction to something that was certain to kill them.
Later in the 1990s, I moved from Sweden to Copenhagen, Denmark. Just outside downtown, there was an area called Christiania, which of course I visited—again feeling like a curious tourist. Originally an old army base, it had been abandoned by the Danish military and was turned into a ‘freetown’ in 1971 by a group of squatters. In the next few years, they organized the area as a semi-independent village, which was a source of both frustration and national pride among Danes.
The place was often romanticized by foreign visitors. Naively so: while Christiania was indeed an interesting social experiment, it also became home to prolific drug trade. The main thoroughfare was even named ‘Pusher Street’ after the open drug trade that quickly organized in the area. The name has been so entrenched that it is searchable on Google Maps.
In the early years, Christiania was often celebrated as a place where individual freedom could flourish. As time went by, though, the influence of drug trade changed the character of the place. Violent crimes increased, ostensibly as part of an effort by organized gangs to make inroads into the drug trade. Local authorities accused the Hells Angels of being the dominant force, and of running a “joint factory” in the area.
Regardless of who ran the drug trade, it was impossible even for the Christianites themselves to deny the mounting problems. The ‘freetown’ was increasingly seen as a problem for the broader Copenhagen community. Its permissive attitude to unashamed trade and use of narcotic drugs led to increased police activity, and eventually to local ordinances that forced Christiania more into line with society as a whole.
Christiania still exists, but it has now become a formally private enclave, owned and operated by a foundation set up by the Christianites themselves. Despite their efforts at cleaning up the place, Christiania retains its reputation as a place where drug use is legitimate. If anything, this ‘freetown’ proves how difficult it is to be tolerant toward simple human eclecticism without also becoming a conduit for social depravity.
It is almost as if those who accept the former automatically have to include the latter in their big tent of social tolerance.
In recent years, areas like Needle Park and Christiania have popped up across America: Los Angeles, Denver, Philadelphia, Seattle, Washington, and of course the pinnacle of them all, San Francisco.
Where authority and social order have abdicated, anarchy and human decay have filled the vacuum. Open drug abuse, tolerated by government, is an essential part of the process. The problems in the Golden Gate city have become so bad that Tom Wolf, a former drug addict turned anti-drug activist, refers to his hometown as “the ‘epicenter’ of the nationwide drug crisis.” In his interview with Fox News, Wolf explains that there are 500 drug dealers, with ties to drug cartels, working openly in San Francisco.
There is nothing tolerant, nothing humane, nothing compassionate about what has happened to these cities. Everywhere drug use is allowed to flourish in the open, be it Zurich, Copenhagen, or San Francisco, the addicts are given an arena in which they can show the world how they lose all sense of dignity. They live their entire lives in the public domain, sleeping, using drugs, committing crimes, even defecating in the open.
Why do we allow this to happen? Why do we allow people to deteriorate to the point where there is not a shred of civilization left in them?
Moreover: why do we allow public spaces to transform into scenes of social disintegration?
So far, the debate over the social degeneration of America’s big cities has failed to address these questions. For the longest time, two arguments in favor of drug habits dominated the public discourse. The first argument is the classically libertarian point that people must not be hindered in their desires by any other restriction than to not bring harm to others. If we harm ourselves, says the libertarian, it is no one’s business to intervene.
At first glance, this argument is appealing. We are all responsible adults, and therefore we have the right to be treated as such by our surroundings. However, even if we maintain that this is a laudable moral principle at every turn, it does not apply to drug abusers. When people are engulfed in their own addiction, they completely lose the ability to function as productive, independent citizens next to the rest of us. They lose the ability to work, and therefore to contribute to the common goods and services we all depend on, e.g., law enforcement, infrastructure, and education. Furthermore, they lose the ability to rationally participate in the affairs of government: they are disqualified from jury duty, and they certainly cannot hold any elected positions of any meaning.
Every drug user whose life deteriorates to the end stage of addiction leaves more of public obligations and duties to the rest of us. On top of that, since they are unable to support themselves through gainful employment, they have to feed themselves off the proceeds of the work that others put in.
In every one of these instances, the drug addict inflicts harm on others. Therefore, his addiction is no longer his own business. Hence, the libertarian argument of individual freedom offered in his defense does not hold.
The second argument for open drug abuse is the socialist notion that drug addicts are victims, resorting to drugs in order to escape some sort of oppression. This argument is impossible to prove, since the victimhood would have to be defined by the addict himself. However, unless all drug addicts are victims and all victims are drug addicts, this argument in defense of drug abuse degrades the addict to a lesser citizenship than non-addicts. It folds people into a tier system, where some are supposed to be morally weaker than others and therefore less culpable for their own actions (if at all).
Aside from the empirical arguments against identifying some people as victims and others as oppressors, the idea of a moral tier system among humans is an affront to the very essence of our existence. When we separate our fellow humans into an elite and a subordinate class, we reject the fundamental Christian principle that we are all equal before our Creator.
There is another aspect to the argument that victimhood liberates individuals from culpability. By demoting some of our fellow humans accordingly, we also demote them below the ability of functioning independently in a civilized society. One of the most important components of a civilization is the transparent, proportionate, and predictable relationship between a person’s actions and that person’s rewards or punishments. If we are not accountable for our own actions, we cannot be expected to distinguish productive from destructive contributions to society.
When that distinction breaks down, so does civilization itself.
Cities that allow the most destructive of human behavior to take over the public space are cities where civilized life as we know it is being marginalized and forced to give way to social fragmentation. Dignity yields to savagery.
A similar marginalization of civilized life takes place in another part of public life, namely in the sphere of family and social values. The new trend where people try to eradicate their birth sex and become something they were not born to be has eroded the dignity of our very creation. It has also undermined the status and reliability of all cultural, social, and economic institutions that are based on humans having two natural sexes.
Proponents of ‘gender reassignment’ practices, including surgery, will passionately tell us that there is nothing dignified with our natural sexes. They will go on to explain that individuals who undergo such treatment are happier than before. Empirically, this is not true: according to a comprehensive Swedish study, the risk for suicide increases generally among individuals who have undergone ‘gender reassignment’ surgery. The study also shows an elevated risk of criminal behavior among a subgroup of them.
It is tragic enough that individuals go as far as to do violence upon their own bodies in the name of ‘gender reassignment’ treatment. The tragedy deepens when such practices are being thrust upon children. Hospitals around America offer surgery for that very purpose. To give three examples:
Considerable health care resources are being gobbled up for treatment that, again, has been proven to have multiple negative consequences for those who undergo sex-change surgery. This prioritization of resources, together with the expansion of the so-called transgender agenda into the school system, has the same effect as drug abuse: of combining human depravity at the individual level with destructive social values conquering the public arena.
Taken together, the private- and public-level consequences of the transgender movement erase the demarcation line between productive and destructive contributions to society. There is nothing contributive or productive in subjecting children to sexually explicit material under the guise of breaking down traditional gender norms. The push to introduce minors to pornography, disguised as ‘educational material,’ is just as poisonous to civilization as the legalization of narcotic drugs.
Fundamentally, the campaigns to normalize the use of harmful drugs and to transform children into objects of the sexually perverted, attack one and the same core component of civilization: self-sacrifice. We can learn this lesson from Jesus Christ, who gave himself to humanity and perpetuity, but we can also approach self-sacrifice from a more everyday viewpoint. Civilization is guaranteed perpetuity when women sacrifice themselves for their children and men sacrifice themselves for their families, their communities, and their country.
It is through self-sacrifice that we maintain all the institutions that uphold a peaceful, predictable, and prosperous nation. Among those institutions is the aforementioned norm that balances deed against punishment, effort against reward. When, on the other hand, it becomes more important for individuals to do violence upon themselves with drugs or gender reassignment, this pillar of civilization begins to crumble.
So long as we celebrate its deterioration as an accomplishment, we will not see what lies ahead. It is not too late to rescue our civilization, but time is running out.
On the Edge of Civilization
Europe has a long tradition of fighting narcotic drugs, with varying results. In 1992, the city of Zürich, Switzerland, closed the infamous ‘Needle Park’ area, just behind the national museum and the central railway station. For a few years in the late 1980s and early 1990s,
As a curious tourist, I visited the place about a year before it was closed. I was shocked at the complete and utter lack of dignity among those who basically spent their entire lives there. Human beings had turned into empty shells, consumed and hollowed out by their addiction to something that was certain to kill them.
Later in the 1990s, I moved from Sweden to Copenhagen, Denmark. Just outside downtown, there was an area called Christiania, which of course I visited—again feeling like a curious tourist. Originally an old army base, it had been abandoned by the Danish military and was turned into a ‘freetown’ in 1971 by a group of squatters. In the next few years, they organized the area as a semi-independent village, which was a source of both frustration and national pride among Danes.
The place was often romanticized by foreign visitors. Naively so: while Christiania was indeed an interesting social experiment, it also became home to prolific drug trade. The main thoroughfare was even named ‘Pusher Street’ after the open drug trade that quickly organized in the area. The name has been so entrenched that it is searchable on Google Maps.
In the early years, Christiania was often celebrated as a place where individual freedom could flourish. As time went by, though, the influence of drug trade changed the character of the place. Violent crimes increased, ostensibly as part of an effort by organized gangs to make inroads into the drug trade. Local authorities accused the Hells Angels of being the dominant force, and of running a “joint factory” in the area.
Regardless of who ran the drug trade, it was impossible even for the Christianites themselves to deny the mounting problems. The ‘freetown’ was increasingly seen as a problem for the broader Copenhagen community. Its permissive attitude to unashamed trade and use of narcotic drugs led to increased police activity, and eventually to local ordinances that forced Christiania more into line with society as a whole.
Christiania still exists, but it has now become a formally private enclave, owned and operated by a foundation set up by the Christianites themselves. Despite their efforts at cleaning up the place, Christiania retains its reputation as a place where drug use is legitimate. If anything, this ‘freetown’ proves how difficult it is to be tolerant toward simple human eclecticism without also becoming a conduit for social depravity.
It is almost as if those who accept the former automatically have to include the latter in their big tent of social tolerance.
In recent years, areas like Needle Park and Christiania have popped up across America: Los Angeles, Denver, Philadelphia, Seattle, Washington, and of course the pinnacle of them all, San Francisco.
Where authority and social order have abdicated, anarchy and human decay have filled the vacuum. Open drug abuse, tolerated by government, is an essential part of the process. The problems in the Golden Gate city have become so bad that Tom Wolf, a former drug addict turned anti-drug activist, refers to his hometown as “the ‘epicenter’ of the nationwide drug crisis.” In his interview with Fox News, Wolf explains that there are 500 drug dealers, with ties to drug cartels, working openly in San Francisco.
There is nothing tolerant, nothing humane, nothing compassionate about what has happened to these cities. Everywhere drug use is allowed to flourish in the open, be it Zurich, Copenhagen, or San Francisco, the addicts are given an arena in which they can show the world how they lose all sense of dignity. They live their entire lives in the public domain, sleeping, using drugs, committing crimes, even defecating in the open.
Why do we allow this to happen? Why do we allow people to deteriorate to the point where there is not a shred of civilization left in them?
Moreover: why do we allow public spaces to transform into scenes of social disintegration?
So far, the debate over the social degeneration of America’s big cities has failed to address these questions. For the longest time, two arguments in favor of drug habits dominated the public discourse. The first argument is the classically libertarian point that people must not be hindered in their desires by any other restriction than to not bring harm to others. If we harm ourselves, says the libertarian, it is no one’s business to intervene.
At first glance, this argument is appealing. We are all responsible adults, and therefore we have the right to be treated as such by our surroundings. However, even if we maintain that this is a laudable moral principle at every turn, it does not apply to drug abusers. When people are engulfed in their own addiction, they completely lose the ability to function as productive, independent citizens next to the rest of us. They lose the ability to work, and therefore to contribute to the common goods and services we all depend on, e.g., law enforcement, infrastructure, and education. Furthermore, they lose the ability to rationally participate in the affairs of government: they are disqualified from jury duty, and they certainly cannot hold any elected positions of any meaning.
Every drug user whose life deteriorates to the end stage of addiction leaves more of public obligations and duties to the rest of us. On top of that, since they are unable to support themselves through gainful employment, they have to feed themselves off the proceeds of the work that others put in.
In every one of these instances, the drug addict inflicts harm on others. Therefore, his addiction is no longer his own business. Hence, the libertarian argument of individual freedom offered in his defense does not hold.
The second argument for open drug abuse is the socialist notion that drug addicts are victims, resorting to drugs in order to escape some sort of oppression. This argument is impossible to prove, since the victimhood would have to be defined by the addict himself. However, unless all drug addicts are victims and all victims are drug addicts, this argument in defense of drug abuse degrades the addict to a lesser citizenship than non-addicts. It folds people into a tier system, where some are supposed to be morally weaker than others and therefore less culpable for their own actions (if at all).
Aside from the empirical arguments against identifying some people as victims and others as oppressors, the idea of a moral tier system among humans is an affront to the very essence of our existence. When we separate our fellow humans into an elite and a subordinate class, we reject the fundamental Christian principle that we are all equal before our Creator.
There is another aspect to the argument that victimhood liberates individuals from culpability. By demoting some of our fellow humans accordingly, we also demote them below the ability of functioning independently in a civilized society. One of the most important components of a civilization is the transparent, proportionate, and predictable relationship between a person’s actions and that person’s rewards or punishments. If we are not accountable for our own actions, we cannot be expected to distinguish productive from destructive contributions to society.
When that distinction breaks down, so does civilization itself.
Cities that allow the most destructive of human behavior to take over the public space are cities where civilized life as we know it is being marginalized and forced to give way to social fragmentation. Dignity yields to savagery.
A similar marginalization of civilized life takes place in another part of public life, namely in the sphere of family and social values. The new trend where people try to eradicate their birth sex and become something they were not born to be has eroded the dignity of our very creation. It has also undermined the status and reliability of all cultural, social, and economic institutions that are based on humans having two natural sexes.
Proponents of ‘gender reassignment’ practices, including surgery, will passionately tell us that there is nothing dignified with our natural sexes. They will go on to explain that individuals who undergo such treatment are happier than before. Empirically, this is not true: according to a comprehensive Swedish study, the risk for suicide increases generally among individuals who have undergone ‘gender reassignment’ surgery. The study also shows an elevated risk of criminal behavior among a subgroup of them.
It is tragic enough that individuals go as far as to do violence upon their own bodies in the name of ‘gender reassignment’ treatment. The tragedy deepens when such practices are being thrust upon children. Hospitals around America offer surgery for that very purpose. To give three examples:
Considerable health care resources are being gobbled up for treatment that, again, has been proven to have multiple negative consequences for those who undergo sex-change surgery. This prioritization of resources, together with the expansion of the so-called transgender agenda into the school system, has the same effect as drug abuse: of combining human depravity at the individual level with destructive social values conquering the public arena.
Taken together, the private- and public-level consequences of the transgender movement erase the demarcation line between productive and destructive contributions to society. There is nothing contributive or productive in subjecting children to sexually explicit material under the guise of breaking down traditional gender norms. The push to introduce minors to pornography, disguised as ‘educational material,’ is just as poisonous to civilization as the legalization of narcotic drugs.
Fundamentally, the campaigns to normalize the use of harmful drugs and to transform children into objects of the sexually perverted, attack one and the same core component of civilization: self-sacrifice. We can learn this lesson from Jesus Christ, who gave himself to humanity and perpetuity, but we can also approach self-sacrifice from a more everyday viewpoint. Civilization is guaranteed perpetuity when women sacrifice themselves for their children and men sacrifice themselves for their families, their communities, and their country.
It is through self-sacrifice that we maintain all the institutions that uphold a peaceful, predictable, and prosperous nation. Among those institutions is the aforementioned norm that balances deed against punishment, effort against reward. When, on the other hand, it becomes more important for individuals to do violence upon themselves with drugs or gender reassignment, this pillar of civilization begins to crumble.
So long as we celebrate its deterioration as an accomplishment, we will not see what lies ahead. It is not too late to rescue our civilization, but time is running out.
READ NEXT
No Whites, Please.
French Prime Minister François Bayrou: Portrait of an Eternal Centrist
Realism Vindicated