You're being intentionally ridiculous.
Not really. How are you going to enforce the NAP, once you've eliminated all possible enforcement mechanisms as inherently evil and unprincipled? The true test of an ethical code is whether you can live by it, and your ideology is an embroidered piece of needlework to hang in the front parlor: pretty to look at, but useless.
The difference with principled conservatives, is that we will criticize behavior we consider immoral, but not try to legislate it.
One of the biggest mistakes conservatives made in the mid-20th century, was getting on board the 'ban drugs' train; they should have continued to hold what is now thought of as a Libertarian position, and just criticized it.
Funny how all these "principles" seem to do is prevent you from actually advancing your conception of what is right. It's almost like the people pushing them on you are controlled opposition. Imagine that.
As to the drug legalization comment, I know it's a derail, but I want to pursue it a moment, to tie it into the thread's overall point. As recently as 1989, public opinion was
overwhelmingly against legalization of any illicit substance. (And people weren't exactly ignoring the dangers of tobacco or booze then, either.) What changed?
The culture is what changed. No longer community-centered, and no longer really valuing productive labor (much of that was shipped overseas), America became a culture of consumption and addiction. This is far more dangerous than libertarians and reactive conservatives realize. The "culture of death" that St. John Paul II warned about has metastasized— we are now entering our third generation of the culture of death, and not improving. By all measures, things are looking very bad indeed.
That is why people aren't having kids, it is why people aren't getting married, it is why
they aren't even fucking anymore— and I guess that is the real stumper, isn't it, because it was recently
inconceivable that kids would prefer to consumption and masturbation to following their biological urges. But something changed— just what is one of those metapolitical questions that form the basis of worldviews— and so did those public views of legalizing drugs.
Of course, in many places they've already been legalized, and if not legalized then they've become normative. The naive argument was that marijuana could be a gateway drug— but in reality it's our
consumerism that is the gateway drug, and once you're hooked on that marijuana is just another soma among many, chemical and memetic. It seems easy to just roll over. And my concern is that's as far as conservative-leaning people will ever go. They'll never spend five minutes thinking about why our opinions on social issues changed so radically— people in 1989 must have just been fucking morons scared of everything. It's just nobody's business but yours, right?
I don't think earlier generations were stupid, and even when they were scared by the sillier aspects of 80s/90s pop culture it was a healthy caution that something important and significant was changing around them. They knew more than they knew. But they didn't know enough. Now we do, so we should be able to do something about it other than yawn as our kids light up a doobie or waste another day speed-running Paper Mario in the basement as the days all blend together for them.
ADDENDUM: My argument about guns was different but related: while I'm a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment, universal concealed carry, and the lifting of many gun restrictions, I disagree with "gun culture." The problem with the conservative mentality on guns is that it has become fetishistic and totally separated from the utility of guns, so it's gone from sportsmanship/hunting/self-defense to roaming around northern Virginia decked out like you expect to take the next flight to Fallujah in your sideline as a tier one operator. Guns have become a form of consumerism. I should know: I live and work in rural Alaska, where hunting is not just a way of life but a means of survival. Nobody out here walks around prepping for Civil War 2.0. It's perverse, like a lot of things become once you destroy the outward reason for them.
