When high priests of America’s political right and left as articulate as William F. Buckley Jr., founding editor of National Review, and Anthony Lewis, a columnist for The New York Times Op-Ed page, peddle the same drug legalization line, it’s time to shout caveat emptor--let the buyer beware. For the boomlet to legalize drugs like heroin, cocaine and marijuana that they--and magazines like National Review and New York--are trying to seed among the right and left ends of the political spectrum, is founded in fiction, not fact. And it’s our children who could suffer long-lasting, permanent damage.

The political climate has changed dramatically in light of the Republican landslide in the fall elections and the Contract With America. But what astonishes me is not so much the content of the contract or the rhetoric of the debate, but the zeal and seeming joy with which social programs are being actually dismantled or put in line for their time on the block. This is coupled with the battle cry of "dismantle government," a return of the get-the-government-off-our-backs rhetoric of the late 1980's, all this dignified now by the rhetoric of devolution and states' rights. More dismaying than anything else, however, is the underlying theme of isolated individualism, a cry of "I've got mine, now you get yours." The Irish nationalist movement, for all its excesses, has at least recognized that the basis of reform is "Sinn Fein"--we ourselves. Our cry seems to be I myself. And we will be the worst for it.