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Locked on 01/15/2014 11:23:33 AM PST by Jim Robinson, reason:
Enough already! |
Posted on 01/13/2014 11:39:29 AM PST by Kaslin
Right now, China and Russia are having a great laugh at America’s expense. For a once proud country with strong moral character and intellectual ambition, we have become a nation intent on destroying itself from within. The publicly sanctioned and widespread celebration of indolent potheads toking themselves into oblivion in Colorado is only the latest example.
We have come a long way from Nancy Reagan’s largely successful “Just Say No” campaign to educate students on the dangers of drugs and their consequences. Call it “You Can Say Yes. “
In the minds of many conservatives, the lines are becoming quickly blurred on the legalization of mind-altering substances as well as the punishment of drug offenders. Libertarians are taking up the cause to push for universal legalization of marijuana around the country. Some are doing this because of Americans’ growing fear of our government’s intrusion into our private lives while others are doing it because of easier access to their favorite recreational pastime. Indeed, the latter motivation seems to be so popular, that it quickly turned into one of the most popular battle cries amongst the young adults for the election of Rep. Ron Paul in the 2012 Republican Primary.
Unfortunately, many traditional Conservatives are also getting on the drug bus because they have bought the Democrat lie that the money collected by drug users could be fiscally beneficial. In the most recent year, Colorado generated $9.1 million in retail sales tax from the sale of medical marijuana. This figure is bound to grow with the introduction of recreational sales and the additional 25% in excise and sales taxes since becoming legal on January 1st.
Looking beyond just the tax revenue, the industry generates millions of dollars every year for the state from licensing and application fees. To apply for and obtain a license to run a medical marijuana facility serving more than 500 patients, for instance, the necessary application and license fees alone approach $40,000. Colorado has agreed to take this new revenue and use it for the education of its children and construction of new schools. Does this mean at 18 every high school graduate will be handed their diploma and a doobie with the instructions to get addicted in order to help fund future generations’ educations?
We are now seeing a very odd mix of bedfellows. One of my favorite Tea Party Senators, Mike Lee of Utah, and one of the most odious liberals in the Senate today, Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, both are now in agreement to reduce the mandatory jail sentence time on non-violent drug offenses in hopes of reducing prison expenses. A federal inmate’s yearly cost for one inmate ranges from $21,000 to $33,000 depending on the prison's level of security. Because of the current system, about half of the nation's more than 218,000 federal inmates are serving time for drug crimes with virtually all of them subjected by some form of mandatory minimum sentencing.
Am I living in the twilight zone right now? Has our country become so ignorant that we have abandoned one of the few positive goals of eliminating substances from our cultural landscape? Drugs that have reduced the productivity, health and advancement of our society? Don’t think drugs have a negative effect on the community? Just look to Washington State, where within the first 6 months of pot being legalized, 745 drivers stopped by the police tested positive for marijuana’s psychoactive ingredient THC and over half of those tested were over the state’s legal limit of 5 nanograms. This means there are more impaired drivers on the roads of Washington and now Colorado driving alongside families on their way to school and people on their way to work. Please tell me how a price can be put on their safety or tell me that drugs cannot hurt innocent bystanders? Please go ask a family who has lost a loved one to drug use or more importantly whose family was affected by someone under the influence.
We are witnessing the steady decline and intentional corrosion of America’s social structure. This is the ultimate goal of leftists: total control of the state that would make middle and lower class its feudal subjects. What better way to destroy a culture then to encourage mind altering substance use by the general public?
Ronald Reagan often quoted John Winthrop’s shining “City upon a Hill” but ultimately under these types of legislative policy, we might suffer more the fate as predicted by Alexis de Toqueville who said “America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
We can see where you are on the issues, you side with the left, legalize drugs, don’t fight gay marriage, you didn’t even know that for centuries homosexuality was against the law in the military, and you don’t support those laws anyway.
Today you can revel in the fact that homosexuality and gay marriage are both equal under federal law regarding the military, at some point, they will probably be allowed to smoke pot, if you guys keep defeating we conservatives.
Your arguments have prevailed to the point of homosexuality making massive, almost total gains in state and federal law.
... or does "conservative" mean using government to force Americans to fund, advance, and tolerate "conservative" government that prosecutes abortion and homosexual invasion?
Which one, ansel?
It wasn’t to me, but VERY interesting post! Glad you got back from the store!
Having laws against homosexual marriage and homosexuals in the military and illegal drugs, is what you have been attacking as "authoritarian".
Now you want to throw in abortion.
You really do oppose conservatism, even into abortion.
You really do only comprehend every third word and willfully at that.
Finny, you came on this thread to fight for drugs, and to label conservatives as “authoritarians”.
Since then you have morphed to wanting to stop us fighting gay marriage, abortion, gays in the military, it is clear that you are deeply opposed to conservatism.
How do you intend to prosecute abortion -- (outlawing it is one thing, I'm on board with that, certainly at least the overturn of Roe v Wade, an evil bit of authoritarian statist "morality") -- do you propose that government follow-up on the results of every over-the-counter pregnancy test? Do you propose that government have a hearing on every miscarriage? Is that "conservative" in your view?
Third -- perhaps the fourth -- time I've asked, and you've declined to answer:
Do you think the Federal government should have law punishing two guys who hold a private ceremony in which they pretend to get married, and do you think Federal government should have law punishing a baker for baking a cake for that ceremony?
Yes or no?
OK, here’s the best I can do right now-
People like to say that government shouldn’t legislate morality. But there’s no way around it, the very nature of governmemt means that morality in some sense is going to be legislated-it seems to come down to whose morality it will be.
To me, it’s not that any one thing is the deal-breaker-it’s that there has been a whole pattern of jettisoning the accepted morality-tradition, if you will-of the wisdom of centuries. They obviously didn’t always get it right, and corrective measures have always been taken (though it seems to me that sometimes the cure was about as bad as the disease! ie the Bolshevik revolution, the bloody Jacobins, etc).
In this case, it’s not just the legislation of acceptance of sodomite “marriage”, acceptance of recreational drug use, etc. It’s an entire pattern of the loosening of strictures which were put there for thousands of years in order to protect society from the “weakest links”. Civilised societies didn’t want to behead homosexuals, but it behooved a civilised society to use societal pressure, backed by law, to keep it in the closet.
Same with recreational drug use. It’s been around since as long as mankind has-men have written classic literature under its influence-but these men were in a position to live with the consequences of their actions on the individual level. A whole society can’t function when the whole society is libertine.
I know that sounds, and is, elitist, but I’m trying to be objective-after all, in all of history I would have been considered one of the peasants.
De Tocqueville said that America’s greatness rested upon her goodness, and I believe that we are seeing the truth of that prescient man’s words more and more, at an accelerating pace. Where will it all end? We already have the sexual libertines pushing for the next “frontier”-adult/child “love”, which, as always with them, means sex.
Where will it all end?
As a Bible-believing literalist, especially the pre-millenial Second Coming, I believe that things are getting progressively worse but we an’t seen nothin’ yet (and thank God I won’t be here, but I pray for the souls who will be).
Only authoritarians think government laws "forbidding" moral weaknesses and failings can cure anything. Ansel, WHY didn't the Constitution state that drunkenness, gambling, prostitution, abortion (yes, it was around then), and homosexuality were banned? Why does government need to do it now?
So again, there was no drug prohibition by Caesar nor does the Bible say there should be. There simply is no biblical justification for secular prohibition laws.
Conservatives oppose drugs, gay marriage, abortion, and gays in the military, and polygamy, as conservatives we want to use politics to fight them, and change laws.
You oppose us.
We know that Jesus made alcohol, but when do they talk about abusing drugs?
Do you think the Federal government should have law punishing two guys who hold a private ceremony in which they pretend to get married, and do you think Federal government should have law punishing a baker for baking a cake for that ceremony?
Yes or no?
Wow, you and your pro-abortion arguments, you think the founders of this nation deliberately left it as some sort of constitutional right?
See #142 by mrsmel.
You lie.
Conservatives oppose drugs, gay marriage, abortion, and gays in the military, and polygamy, as conservatives we want to use politics to fight them, and change laws.
You LIE because you don't want to use politics to fight them, you want to use government to punish Americans with MORE laws.
The conservative wants to use limited government to fight them, limited government that would do away with the liberal laws that now punish those of us who oppose drugs, gay marriage, abortion, and gays in the military, and polygamy.
Do you think the Federal government should have law punishing two guys who hold a private ceremony in which they pretend to get married, and do you think Federal government should have law punishing a baker for baking a cake for that ceremony?
Yes or no?
Me thinks you've been tipping the bottle there, chum. :^)
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