VDARE.COM is a coalition, as I keep saying, and I don't expect agreement on any subject except the need for patriotic immigration reform. But on the Jason Lewis Show Thursday night (MP3) I was asked directly about drug legalization and I endorsed it because I have long thought it would get the trade out of criminal hands and destroy the economic rationale for the Mexican cartels. This was of course the view of the late Nobel economics laureate Milton Friedman and it's actually quietly widespread among conservatives—a Reagan appointee once told me it was the private consensus in the entire top echelon of the Justice Department—but it never seems to get anywhere.

However, the need for drug legalization does not imply that America is to blame for Mexico's problems, as the current liberal meme suggests. The drug prohibition is costly in many ways to America, but a country with a high level of culture can survive many costly policies —look at Scandinavia's welfare states. Mexico does not, and can't.