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Skaal, Peter. (clink)

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thank you, i enjoy a good story

well told about life and the world.

This was definitely that.!

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With this column on Friendships, you've awakened me to an unintended error. Rather than share my thoughts about your series on drugs here with you, I've unthinkingly done that on National Review's Facebook page. I regret that. I suppose it hadn't occurred to me to think of myself as your friend (not imagining I would rise to that height). But now I can see how my trust in and admiration for your words in fact make me exactly that.

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Thank you :).

As to the series on drugs, I didn't see your comments there. If you would point me to them or share them on Substack, I'd love to read them.

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I'm just unfamiliar enough to be unable to "point" you in any direction. Suffice to say mine were polite, I hope, disagreements with your positions in a couple of instances based mostly on concern for resulting perceptions of a country absent a moral compass. While I agree the war on drugs is an abject failure and has caused more problems than it has solved, I cannot get all the way to legalization as an appropriate option. Something that offers sustained efforts to 1} remove the drugs and 2) correct their effects, combined with a continued statement of disapproval, I guess.

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I'm fine with - and indeed very used to - disagreement. I'm a libertarian, after all, and we not only get vehement disagreement from both Left and Right, we get it from our own.

I only ask that you at least give my chapters a open-mind. I'm far from done in the presentation - it's going to run 15 or 16 chapters.

I hope to make the case that "moral compass" is a nice but demonstrably not-working notion, and that its pursuit in this case has done far more harm than good.

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I had no idea that you were a BOTW fan of Taranto, aka the king of puns. I was sad to see him turn over his column but still enjoy his witty tweets. I subscribed to the BOTW Facebook group but I abandoned Facebook entirely after the 2016 elections due to the vitriol. I always thought Facebook was the place to just share photos and jokes and other life experiences, but not a political battleground. I jumped ship because I just don't need that negativity in my life.

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I was pretty hardcore BOTWT for a while. I was among those trying to post "first comment" or "top ten" back when there was a competition in that regard.

Couple things about Facebook

1 - there is very good signal-to-noise in closed political groups - you just need to find one or two good ones.

2 - I get a lot of readership, and more than a few subscribers, by sharing there. I've got about 8 or so groups, open and closed, that I share some (but not all) my posts, and when I share heavily, my "read" tally can be double the subscriber list.

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