Posted on 12/10/2012 1:33:01 PM PST by Morgana
The sad state of the welfare class is completely entangled with drug prohibition. While excusing none of the other causes — sloth, promiscuity, ignorance, illegitimacy, etc. — drug prohibition has made a bad thing much worse. The lure of drug dealing kills or imprisons an absurd portion of the young men of that class, and renders them ineligible for most employment when they get out of the game. Drug gangs are the main source of structural criminality and violence in their communities. Drug money deeply corrupts institutions that could be relied upon otherwise to stabilize or bring order.
Poisonous berries kill.
Pot does not.
Your argument is, um, retarded.
Psst - prohibitionism is a progressive thing . . .
If prohibitionism is a progressive thing, the why do the lefties all favor the legalization of weed?
They hardly do. If they did, Massachusetts and Vermont would be weed paradises right now. They are not.
I think you may need to take a time out and do some research on how the prohibitionist movement was started here in the United States. We can discuss afterwards.
In addition, consider the states in which pot is decriminalized or legal for recreational use. California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Colorado, Nebraska, Minnesota, Ohio, New York, the New England states excepting New Hampshire and Vermont, Virgina, Alaska, and Mississipi.
Of those, only Alaska and Mississipi are conservative states, and Alaska has a 'high' population of Inuits who smoke the stuff for religious reasons, which skews the state further in favor than it otherwise would be.
Like it or not, pro-weed is firmly in the realm of leftydom...Except our good buddy Ron Paul of course, who favors legalizing it.
Wow! just WOW!!!
We're talking about prohibitionism.
Do some research on the origins of prohibitionism - the thing that got the ban this/ban that attitude really rolling in the 19th and 20th century - and then we can have a discussion on whether that mentality is a progressive or conservative cause.
Here and now, the liberals are tearing our country apart. Here and now, it is predominately liberals who favor the legalization of marijuana. Therefore, here and now, I oppose the liberals in their efforts to further degrade America with weed, as I oppose them on every other issue they push.
You posit it as a conservative/liberal issue, but what I'm suggesting is it's really a statist/non-statist issue instead.
You're concerned with the societal effects of marijuana use, and that's a legitimate concern. However, this makes you no different, in effect, from a liberal who is concerned with the societal effects of poverty, or a liberal who is concerned with the societal effects of income disparity between blacks and whites, or a liberal who is concerned with the societal effects of not having access to free contraception through one's law school health care policy. In all cases, you're clamoring for a heavy-handed, proactive government solution to a societal problem that is best handled in an EXTRA-governmental manner.
You want to warn people of the societal effects of marijuana use? Have at it. Educate people: Broadcast your message far and wide. Use facts. Argue your case. Make yourself heard.
Don't ask the government to do your dirty work for you, lest you give liberals and progressives the standing to get the government to do their dirty work for them as well.
Get it?
Wyrd bið ful aræd just fell off the Obama bus and landed on our front lawn a couple of months ago, and has been stinking up the place ever since.
He has no understanding of the fact that government interferance in people’s lives is the essence of leftist politics. He’s been a leftist all of his life, if what he has posted here is any evidence.
He thinks tyranny is “going Galt.”
That sounds like one big mess.
The leftists claim that the government shouldn't "interfere" with it. What say you?
In a way you are correct, but then things are getting too philosophical. In the real world, if I see the democrats/liberals throwing their weight behind something, I'll push against it. In my opinion we can't afford to play mental chess on things like weed and let the lefties get their way on yet another issue.
It is true that the liberals are statist totalitarians, and it is true that the liberals support legalization of marijuana. Thus they must see it in some way having a positive effect on their goal of creating a marxist state, and thus the legalization of marijuana, while possibly having the appearance of an issue of freedom, is actually in some way accelerating us towards marxism. I can see no other reason why the lefties would support it.
Remember, in order to keep the populace docile in a dictatorship, freedom is reduced but license is increased. Marijuana is a license issue to keep the sheeple happy while their true, pure, God-given freedoms are stolen. IMHO.
Your math is off.
The decriminalization of marijuana is not a Democrat/liberal issue. If it were, why, then, would not Obama simply announce that the feds will no longer enforce federal MJ law in states where weed is legal for recreational use and medicinal use? Reports are that under the Obama administration, anti-MJ federal action is on the uptick from where it was under the Bush administration.
Further, as I wrote earlier, if marijuana decriminalization were a Democrat/liberal issue, weed would be perfectly 100% legal here in Massachusetts, where 9.5 out of every 10 of our pols are not only Democrats, but the most progressive kind of Democrat.
Truth is, there are prohibitionists on both sides of the aisle, because prohibition is not a liberal/conservative issue, it's a statist/non-statist issue.
And they must be correct about that? Because liberals so accurately perceive reality?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.