To Do or Not to Do--That Is the Question : Drug politics: Dole’s telling kids to reject the culture’s come-ons runs afoul of capitalism’s making money.

Bob Dole’s latest anti-drug slogan, “Just don’t do it,” is the antithesis of the Nike advertising slogan, “Just do it!”--which itself is a variant of the hippie motto, “If it feels good, do it!” The significance of the connection should not be lost on the American people, even if it is not perceived by Dole’s camp, for it parallels the connection between advertising and consumption and the decline in traditional values.

Let me put the matter directly: The totally unfettered economic system that conservatives champion is the principal corrosive agent eating away at the traditional values they seek to defend.

Dole’s anti-drug slogan marks the second time in little more than a year that he has apparently unknowingly approached the heart of this fundamental contradiction in the American system (and even more in the Republican philosophy). In June 1995, as Senate majority leader, Dole gave a speech in Los Angeles attacking entertainment companies that purvey sex and violence. He recommended that they operate from considerations of decency and responsibility, not merely those of profit. “I’m just saying sometimes you have to have corporate responsibility and remember the impact on children,” Dole pronounced.

Indeed. But why confine this sound prescription of placing decency and responsibility above profits to the entertainment industry?

Corporations, striving to stimulate sufficient demand to keep up with the enormous supply of their products rolling off assembly lines, constantly assault our senses with advertising designed to promote self-indulgence through the generic message: “Aw, go ahead!”

Those who insist that there should be no limits in economic behavior create a social climate in which it is difficult to argue for limits on other sorts of behavior. With the business leaders of the nation telling us “There are no limits” and asking, “Who says you can’t have it all?” how can we hope to persuade young people to limit their behavior when it comes to sex, drugs and violence?

To most of us, the phrase “traditional values” refers to family and community, responsibility, sacrifice, frugality, conservation and sharing. These are precisely the values that have been undermined by the every-man-for-himself, the-devil-take-the-hindmost economics that “conservatives” preach. It is the ascendancy of self-interest that has caused the disintegration of community and family, the eradication of the very basis of the traditional values longed for by so many Americans today. In their place is a supermarket society, where marketplace values have driven out community connections that used to support traditional values.

If we measure only by marketplace values, selling songs and movies that celebrate murder, rape and mayhem is commendable so long as it turns a profit. But if we consider traditional values, selling such noxious trash is reprehensible. Dole has recognized this in the entertainment industry, remarking on his return to Hollywood this summer that positive movies were topping the box office, but he seems unwilling to give his insight the wider application it deserves. If corporations have responsibilities beyond selling anything and using any means to sell as much as possible, then why not place traditional values above marketplace values in other areas as well? Might corporations not also be held accountable for the impact on children and families of “downsizing” that puts parents out of work, of moving plants overseas, of keeping wages down while profits soar, of using tantalizing advertisements to induce people to buy all sorts of stuff they do not need, of polluting our air and water, and so forth? Is not Joe Camel in the same league as Snoop Doggy Dogg?

Which is more likely to push a young person over the edge into experimenting with drugs: a single stupid comment on one 1992 MTV program by a presidential candidate seeking to ingratiate himself with “hip” young voters, or hundreds of commercials every day urging everyone to just say yes to every impulse they have?

If Dole wants young people to just not do it, a much better place to start than airing an old foolish statement by his opponent would be to urge his friends in big business to stop seeking profits from human weaknesses in communities they have stripped of traditional values.

To “just do it,” or not to “just do it”: that is the question.

Whether ‘tis nobler in the society to suffer

The come-ons and temptations of outrageous commercials,

Or to take arms against a sea of troubling self-indulgence,

And by opposing end them.