Friday, March 27, 2009

Peace on the Home Front

One need not travel to China to find indigenous cultures lacking human rights. America leads the world in percentile behind bars, thanks to the ongoing open season on hippies, commies, and non-whites in the war on drugs. Cops get good performance reviews for shooting fish in a barrel. If we’re all about spreading liberty abroad, then why mix the message at home? Peace on the home front would enhance global credibility.

The drug czar’s Rx for prison fodder costs dearly, as lives are flushed down expensive tubes, to be paid for by our descendants. My shaman’s second opinion is that psychoactive plants are God’s gift. Behold, it’s all good. When Eve ate the apple, she knew a good apple, and evil prohibition.

Rooting out the number-one cash crop in the land burns tax dollars instead of booking them. Arresting Americans for gardening empowers outlaws to take over Mexico. The DEA says they don’t need no stinking amendment. Political prisoner Marc Emery delivered on Madame Secretary Clinton’s promise to Mexico. He reduced U. S. demand for Mexican pot, by selling seed to American farmers.

Nixon passed the CSA (Controlled Substances Act of 1970) on the false assurance that the Schafer Commission would later justify criminalizing his enemies, but he underestimated Schafer’s integrity. No amendments can assure due process under an anti-science law without due process itself. Psychology hailed the breakthrough potential of LSD, until the CSA shut down research, and pronounced that marijuana has no medical use.

The RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993) allows Native American Church members to eat peyote. Non-placebo sacraments remain prohibited to everybody else. The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment should protect use of entheogen sacraments to mediate communion for all God’s children. Mortal lawmakers should not presume to thwart the intelligent design that molecular keys unlock spiritual doors. 

Freedom of speech presupposes freedom of thought. The Constitution doesn’t enumerate any governmental power to embargo diverse states of mind. Legislators who would limit cognitive liberty lack jurisdiction. How and when did government usurp this power to coerce conformity? The Mayflower sailed to escape coerced religious conformity. Persons who appreciate their own free choice of path in life should tolerate seekers’ self-exploration.

Common-law holds that adults are the legal owners of their own bodies. The Founding Fathers undersigned that the God-given rights of liberty and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable. Socrates said to know your self, and paid the price. The substances are tools. It might not be bad to learn their uses.

7 comments:

  1. Well said, my man.

    It's a long painful process to turn an Empire from the mentality of "war is the answer to every problem" into a sane and compassionate society.

    We need a revolution of conscience and consciousness.

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  2. "Freedom of speech presupposes freedom of thought. The Constitution doesn’t enumerate any governmental power to embargo diverse states of mind. How and when did government usurp this power to coerce conformity? The Mayflower sailed to escape coerced conformity. Legislators who would limit cognitive liberty lack jurisdiction."

    That last eloquently worded line is quote-worthy.

    Excellent work. Thank you for sharing it with us at The Truth Will Set You Free.

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  3. Thanks for adding this to the conversation about Barney Frank's marijuana legislation over at AskDeb.com

    You make some excellent points, here.

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  4. Thank you for your comment. Corrections eschews normative (moral) economics and embraces positive (factual) economics.

    Your thesis appears to be that the government should not be involved in making drugs illegal. Point by point, your argument appears to be:

    1) You do not see the incarceration of large numbers of a population as copacetic with an ideal of liberty.

    2) Incarcerating individuals for drug offenses is wasteful, both of taxpayer money and of forgone opportunities.

    3) The original law was based not in utility concerns.

    4) The existence of religious exceptions to prohibition are morally anathema.

    5) A necessary input to the production of Freedom of Speech is an absence of restrictions to inputs on Freedom of Thought (viz., psychotomimetic drugs).

    6) Individuals should have the Freedom to Choose.

    Corrections admits that our understanding of your syntax was limited, and welcomes elucidatory addenda.

    It isn't clear that the first point is correct. Corrections sees the capacity for differential rates of crime without a difference in liberty. One is not proof of the other (it may be suggestive).

    Your second point appears to beg an empirical question. It appears to corrections, in the absence of supporting evidence, Corrections conjectures that your point is valid for the marginal individual incarcerated for illicit drugs, but not the average individual.

    We cannot speak to the third or fourth point.

    Your conjecture on the fifth point is an interesting one. To Corrections, it hinges on the existence of input substitutes. If there are substitutes to the prohibited input, then the shadow price of prohibition will be small.

    Corrections agrees that individuals have knowledge the government does not have, that government incentives are often not properly aligned, and that a Freedom to Choose is a Pareto improving option.

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  5. Incidentally & additionally, you appear to be referring to psychotomimetic, not psychoactive drugs. Psychotomimetic drugs provide hallucinations, while psychotropic drugs are a broader category, including chemical compounds as mundane as caffeine.

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  6. thanks for you views on this topic, with all luck the world will embrace humankind's taste for divine grace and will displace any animosity and face generosity with an open hand or perhaps be the giver standing to deliver spectacular splendors and the ultimate mind bender might be that we know yet we continue to seek and to show.

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  7. Disclaimer. My role in self-publishing these words is to disseminate the words, not to originate them. Richard Glen Boire, Esq. founder of the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, is the author of many of these words. I have also gathered words from other sources. I have fit my two cents worth here and there.

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