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Tuesday, January 22, 2008
New Column on the WS
Jan Narveson, Professor Emeritus in Philosophy at the University of Waterloo, who was made an Officer in the Order of Canada in 2004, has a new piece up on the Western Standard. He sides with Marc Emery against the paternalistic U.S.-based war on drugs.
(Welcome aboard, Jan).
Posted by Western Standard on January 22, 2008 in Western Standard | Permalink
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Another academic/philosopher apologist for drug crime, druggies and drug culture.
Epsi
Posted by: Epsilon | 2008-01-22 8:32:45 AM
Narveson's begins his article making a distinction between "old paternalism" and "new paternalism." Old paternalism, he tells us, is the vice of the conservative and new paternalism is the vice of the liberal. This is interesting, but it seems to have nothing to do with the rest of the article. I think this is because he does not really understand the distinction he just explained.
For example, look at what he says about Aristotle: "The claim that they are just doing what you really want is as old as the hills. Aristotle defended slavery on the ground that it was better for the slave." But Aristotle's claim was not that slavery is what the slave wants or that slavery was a means to some other end that the slave had chosen. One of those needs to be the case for Aristotle to be an example of new paternalism. In fact, it is just an example of old paternalism. Aristotle thought he was a better ultimate authority for what ends are best for slaves, not merely an authority on a means to getting their ends.
Then Narveson goes on to explain why public authorities discount expressions by drug users about what ends they prefer. But again, this is just to invoke old paternalism - that the non-drug using population knows better than the drug user what ends are best for him. Even his further example of the Taliban forcing women to cover themselves is old paternalism in action, not new paternalism.
New paternalism is an interesting concept when discussing child care policy. Parents are the ultimate authority on deciding that the end they want is smart happy children, but the state - aided by the scientific experts - decides that public child care is required to achieve that end. It also is interesting if health care is the subject. Individuals get to decide that having access to high quality and affordable health care is an end they value, then the state decides that Medicare is the best method to achieving that goal. But it is not at all clear what ultimate end Narveson thinks drug users have freely chosen for which punitive legal restrictions on drugs is the best method to achieve that end. Drug laws, it would seem, are really just a good example of old paternalism.
Now I suppose that there might be a case to be made that pot laws are an example of new paternalism, but only for people who don't identify getting high from time to time as an ultimate end. But that does not describe any pot users I have ever heard advocating pot. Pot smoking (unlike Medicare and public daycare) is not something proponents generally advocate because it is a good means to some other end. It is an end in itself.
The article then spins off into a vague anti-American rant ultimately asking "Do we in Canada truly have to kow-tow to the Americans at their worst?" But overall the whole thing is a bit of a rambling mess.
You'd never know from my comments that I agree that pot should be legal. But I do. I just don't think that Narveson's article is a very coherent defense of that position.
Posted by: Fact Check | 2008-01-22 9:17:06 AM
Mr. Epsilon, I see, is another staunch upholder of fascism. Or maybe he doesn't like that appelation. Can he think of a better one? He evidently "knows" that drugs are suitably outlawed, along with Other Religions, transfats, and other evils.
Posted by: Jan Narveson | 2008-01-22 9:42:31 PM
Re Fact Check:
That's an interesting post, calling for considerable comment.
The old/new distinction, as I agree, is not profitable to invoke in relation to Aristotle in a hurry. Yes, Aristotle is indeed an old paternalist - BUT you'll remember that
according to Aristotle, we all fundamentally, and by nature, want happiness, and his claim
is that the slave is happier being a slave (assuming he's a slave "by nature" rather than by other people's mistake.) So Aristotle's view is that the slave really wants to be a slave, but doesn't realize that. Uh, huh. The clue is that you don't ask the slave.
Re new paternalism: this is what contemporary defenders of the drug laws subscribe to.
some claim to be pure liberals, claiming that drugs have negative externalities that justify
their prohibition. I don't address them really, assuming that they've been proven wrong.
But others claim that drugs are bad for the user, listing assorted effects. The thing is,
it should be up to the individual to decide whether he prefers the life that includes those
effects to the life that doesn't include them, but doesn't include drugs either.
Since the Americans have managed to cover themselves with crud, big time, on this issue,
I don't particularly see why my reference to them is "vague" and I do think, as the newspapers and
commentators do, that Canadian drug policy is muchly influenced by the desire not to upset the
Americans. In this respect, it seems to me, they need all the upsetting people can manage.
I accept Fact Check's pronouncement that my entry was "sloppy". It was written in haste.
But I still think it's in essentials right, across the board.
Posted by: Jan Narveson | 2008-01-22 9:45:26 PM
If this is typical of professors at universities today, it's a safe bet I'll send no son of mind there. Professors are supposed to be thoughtful, educated, urbane, fully evolved whole-brained thinkers. But this lamentable effort reads like a first-year undergrad student wrote it--full of adolescent petulance, self-righteous surliness, and reflexive anti-Americanism.
This has nothing to do with paternalism, liberalism, or conservatism. It is about the right of a nation to guard its borders against smugglers. If Emery had been smuggling guns, the good professor would no doubt send him south to spend the rest of his life in a shoe box. But because he was smuggling dope, the Americans are supposed to stand by and do nothing, simply because WE have elected to do nothing? Is the good professor afraid that the Americans' vigorous action will make Canadians look indolent and lazy by comparison (which, incidentally, it does)?
In light of the recent shootings of innocent bystanders in Toronto, that city's Star newspaper, Mayor Dave Miller, and Premier Dalton McGuinty are once again demanding a handgun ban and lashing the Americans for allowing handguns to be imported into Canada (neglecting to mention that policing our borders is OUR job, which might ironically be more effective if our border agents had guns). However, those guns are payment for the dope moving into the United States--courtesy smugglers like Emery. Remember that the next time you try to argue that he doesn't hurt anyone. And for that matter, all you stoners out there, remember the blood of the innocents shed so you could enjoy your guilty little pleasures.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-01-22 11:41:15 PM
Shane: Remember alcohol prohibition? Remember the movement of guns because of it? The Tommy gun was there because the alcohol was illegal. If alcohol were legal, guns wouldn't be around. Like they aren't today. Not at the LCBO, and not at the private alcohol stores in Alberta.
Legalize drugs, and you deal with the guns. The harm is due to prohibition, not due to the marijuana.
Posted by: P.M. Jaworski | 2008-01-22 11:45:39 PM
P.M., referring to alcohol prohibition is a popular but misguided straw man. It's not a valid comparison. The effects of marijuana are much more unpredictable than those of alcohol because marijuana stays in your system for months, whereas with alcohol it's a matter of hours. Tobacco wrecks your lungs but does not affect your mind; alcohol affects your mind but does no physical harm (unless you're a wino); marijuana is even more destructive to your lungs than tobacco and more of a mind alterer than alcohol, the worst of both worlds. If you oppose smoking tobacco, you must also oppose marijuana. If you want to be rational, that is.
By the way, Thompson submachine gun (specifically the Thompson M1928A1) was invented in the late 1910s and originally marketed to farmers "to chase off rustlers." Also, thanks to Hollywood, the "Chicago typewriter's" reputation as part of gangland far exceeded its actual use. That reputation was instrumental in one of the U.S.'s first gun control laws which required a $200 tax stamp (then four times the cost of the gun itself) for any automatic arm. Of course, the gun control law had no effect.
The issue is not the availability of firearms; they have never been LESS available at any time in the last 100 years. Marijuana has been illegal since 1938 yet only since the 1960s has there been serious drug violence and only since about the 1990s in Canadian cities. Neither prohibition nor the supposed increased availability of guns is to blame. The only other option is lax law enforcement. Canadians bemoan the U.S. incarceration rate, but their murder rate is now lower than the average for the entire 20th century. Canada is getting laxer and laxer and as a result, more and more crime-ridden.
PUTTING CROOKS BEHIND BARS WORKS. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT WORKS. ACCEPT IT.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-01-23 12:21:56 AM
What does capital punishment have to do with this discussion? I'll just ignore it.
Putting crooks behind bars does work. I agree. Why all the shouting? And why directed at me?
You misunderstand the analogy. The analogy is to the prohibition of a substance that is easily made, has a high price (thanks to its status as illegal--marijuana, being a weed, would cost next to nothing otherwise), and is, in addition to this, relatively harmless when consumed responsibly. I don't care that marijuana is "unpredictable," whereas alcohol is predictable. That's like bringing up the fact that marijuana is smoked, whereas alcohol is not, or the fact that marijuana plants are the colour green, whereas wheat and rye and barley and potatoes are not. All irrelevant.
Marijuana and guns are related because marijuana is illegal. The same would happen if we made tobacco illegal. Or coffee. Or alcohol.
That was my point.
Posted by: P.M. Jaworski | 2008-01-23 12:47:00 AM
Another reason your Prohibition analogy falls flat, P.M., is because we've been there before. Bootleggers ran alcohol from Canada into the U.S., but our streets were not flooded with guns and bling bling as a result. The violence stayed in the U.S., between rival gangs. "Marijuana and guns are related because marijuana is illegal"? Please. Jaywalking is illegal too; is that associated with guns? How about fraud or identity theft? That line of reasoning is like saying: "I enjoy eating pasta because my house is made of bricks."
You don't care the marijuana is unpredictable? Would you get into an airplane you knew was unpredictable? Would you drive over a bridge you knew was unpredictable? And you honestly think that a drug's unpredictability is as academic and trivial as its primary means of ingestion?
Did you sit down and think, for even a minute, before sending this reply?
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-01-23 7:04:27 AM
Jan Narveson wrote: "Mr. Epsilon, I see, is another staunch upholder of fascism."
Professor, do you have proof that Epsilon has an agenda that includes centralization of authority under a dictator, a 100% command economy, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, suppression of all personal freedom, and an intensely nationalistic and belligerent foreign policy? Does anything in HER post suggest that? Or is that just the word you use whenever you encounter someone who doesn't agree with you?
Given the stringency of your analysis of this case, I suppose I should not be surprised. I knew they were giving senators' jobs to fashion designers; it is a logical step that we should bestow our country's highest honours on mad minstrels and besotted philosophers. Professor emeritus and Officer of the Order of Canada, indeed. Just goes to show you can have an M.Sc. or a Ph.D. and still fall for the same old B.S.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-01-23 7:16:37 AM
"You don't care the marijuana is unpredictable? Would you get into an airplane you knew was unpredictable? Would you drive over a bridge you knew was unpredictable? And you honestly think that a drug's unpredictability is as academic and trivial as its primary means of ingestion?
Did you sit down and think, for even a minute, before sending this reply?
Shane Matthews | 23-Jan-08 7:04:27 AM
"You can have a single drink, feel no mood change whatever, and be safe to drive. Try that with a single joint. You can have a drink a day for the rest of your life with no ill effects whatever (except perhaps an expanding waistline). Try that with a joint a day. (Or maybe you already have.)"
Shane Matthews from Seeding Sovereignty thread
17-Jan-08 12:41:51 AM
Did someone say marijuana was unpredictable?
The U.S. Olympic team tried to get Canadian Gold Medal snowboarder Ross Rebagliati's 1998 Winter Olympics Gold medal rescinded on the basis that Mr. Rebagliati had smoked marijuana and the U.S. contended that, "Marijuana is a performance ENHANCING drug."
Ultimately, because marijuana was not listed as a banned performance enhancing drug under Olympic guidelines(no doubt due to U.S. influence) Mr. Rebagliati retained his Gold medal and the U.S., after realizing the ramifications to the War on Drugs of claiming that 'marijuana was a performance enhancing drug', quickly withdrew it's complaint.
Posted by: Speller | 2008-01-23 8:15:38 AM
In the Olympic case I think the committee was more concerned about the reputation of the sport as whole than any effect the marijuana might have had. So they concocted an excuse on the spur of the moment without giving any thought to how ludicrous it sounded. Probably they weren't expecting the media circus that resulted. I've heard marijuana called many things, but never once have I heard it called a stimulant.
Marijuana is predictable in that 1) it stones you out; and 2) it is virtually impossible to OD on it, because you'll be unable to lift a joint to your face long before the THC in your blood reaches fatal concentrations. What is NOT predictable is the effects it will have on your faculties, and how long those effects will persist.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-01-23 8:43:59 AM
>"because you'll be unable to lift a joint to your face long before the THC in your blood reaches fatal concentrations."
Shane Matthews | 23-Jan-08 8:43:59 AM
Nonsense.
Marijuana and it's derivatives have been used for thousands of years in the Old World.
Marijuana as a stimulant is only new in the New World because the New World is new.
A derivative of marijuana, hashish, is a highly concentrated natural form of the active drug ingredient, THC, which has been eaten by people for eons.
No accounts exist of overdoses or ill effects.
Posted by: Speller | 2008-01-23 8:54:56 AM
You would think that a professor of all people could maintain his composure in a debate. But nooooo, our nutty professor is the first to initiate name calling addressing me in his first sentence as a fascist.
By the way Professor Nutbar, I am a woman and do not want your f***ed up version of Utopia corrupting my children. I have zero tolerance for drugs and negative tolerance for Evil Creeps like you promoting the use of drugs through your brand of "tolerance".
To think my tax dollars are supporting this shiteous thinking is appalling.
Epsi
Posted by: Epsilon | 2008-01-23 8:59:38 AM
>"Marijuana is predictable in that 1) it stones you out"
Shane Matthews | 23-Jan-08 8:43:59 AM
Many first time marijuana users do not experience any effects at all.
While some people describe the state of mind as 'stoned' I have never heard of the term 'stoned out'.
Perhaps it is just a term of bigotry.
Regardless, as research will show that many skiers and snowboarders smoke marijuana to enhance the experience of skiing, and skiing is a dangerous sport, it is therefore reasonable to conclude that marijuana does not have a deleterious affect on performance or the slopes would be littered with injured people.
Epsilon,
I have no doubt you're a 'one beer girl' as well.
Low tolerance, that's you.
Low knowledge and understanding as well, I think.
Go back to Scotland, and your tax dollars won't contribute any longer to the Canadian scene.
By the way, you keep talking about who you'll vote for here.
Did you know it's illegal for you to vote or are you suddenly a citizen?
Posted by: Speller | 2008-01-23 9:10:08 AM
>"The effects of marijuana are much more unpredictable than those of alcohol because marijuana stays in your system for months, whereas with alcohol it's a matter of hours."
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 23-Jan-08 12:21:56 AM
As a matter of fact it takes 3 hours to metabolize each 1 once of alcohol while a marijuana stone is over in 40-90 minutes.
Drunken states from alcohol remain for multiple hours, depending on the amount consumed.
Both drugs can be recognized in tissue and hair for months or years depending on hair length, both alcohol and THC are oil soluble and traces remain in body fat, particularly the organ fat of the liver.
Posted by: Speller | 2008-01-23 9:16:08 AM
Speller, you don't really expect to find a 4,000-year-old account of someone overdosing on hashish, do you? We both agree that that whatever else marijuana may do to you, you won't die from an overdose. How long people have been using a given drug has little to do with its toxicity or the OD rate. Opium has been used for as long as marijuana and it is VERY possible to OD on opiates.
And yes, there is a toxicity threshold beyond which cannabis is fatal. Even WATER is fatal if you take enough of it. The point is that by the time you approached the L50 point of marijuana you'd be so hopelessly inebriated that you wouldn't be able to move. (And you'd have stacked your fat cells with enough THC to make sure you stayed that way for about a month.) If alcohol were as fast-acting as smoked pot, the same would most likely be true of booze, too.
Skiers use marijuana to enhance the experience? Kindly direct me to a source where I can conduct such "research." And your argument that marijuana does not affect motor skills, reaction time, or judgement rings about as true as a good old boy's argument that he's more careful behind the wheel after a couple of drinks. So many people are so down on other people's choice of drug but turn a blind eye to their own. Only in such a denial-infused environment could the dope smoker look down on the tobacco smoker and be taken seriously.
Also, think about what you say when you say THC is stored in fat cells. If that is true, then it will be released any time fat cells are burned, resulting in mini-buzzes that can persist for weeks and cause impairment when you least expect it. There are reliable accounts of regular smokers suddenly zoning out days after their last joint, often at the most inconvenient of times (such as while driving). Once you're sober after a night of boozing, you're sober, period, until you lift the glass again.
Anyway, all of this is academic. The issue is whether or not the U.S. has the right to prosecute smugglers, which, of course, it has. This applies both to illegal products and legal products illegally imported. Case closed.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-01-23 10:28:03 AM
Speller wrote: "Epsilon,
I have no doubt you're a 'one beer girl' as well.
Low tolerance, that's you.
Low knowledge and understanding as well, I think.
Go back to Scotland, and your tax dollars won't contribute any longer to the Canadian scene.
By the way, you keep talking about who you'll vote for here.
Did you know it's illegal for you to vote or are you suddenly a citizen?"
Show some respect, pothead, or I'll crush you like an insect. At 300 pounds I could drink your narrow butt under the table and still recite the alphabet backwards. Why is it so many people today equate critical thinking with gonchie pulls?
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-01-23 10:35:05 AM
>"Opium has been used for as long as marijuana and it is VERY possible to OD on opiates."
Shane Matthews | 23-Jan-08 10:28:03 AM
Irrelevant.
Marijuana is neither and opiate nor a narcotic.
At the very least you should be able to come up with actual verifiable accounts of harm in the New World prior to marijuana prohibition.
These accounts do not exist.
Why?
Because marijuana was prohibited to keep down Chinks in Canada, and Niggers/Spics in the U.S.*, not because there was demonstrable harm.
*not my opinion of these people but was/is the view of the Marijuana Prohibitionists who enacted the legislation.
>"The point is that by the time you approached the L50 point of marijuana you'd be so hopelessly inebriated that you wouldn't be able to move."
And your source of this information is what?
Link please.
>"Also, think about what you say when you say THC is stored in fat cells. If that is true, then it will be released any time fat cells are burned, resulting in mini-buzzes that can persist for weeks and cause impairment when you least expect it."
And how fast do you think people burn fat, Shane?
Mini-buzzes?
Sounds like a cup of espresso to me.
You want people to be jailed as criminals for mini-buzzes?
>"There are reliable accounts of regular smokers suddenly zoning out days after their last joint, often at the most inconvenient of times (such as while driving). Once you're sober after a night of boozing, you're sober, period, until you lift the glass again."
Reliable accounts of zoning out for days? Horseshit. Link please.
Sober after a night of boozing?
Booze is the number one cause of downtime calling in sick for employees in Canada.
Maybe you don't know how long it takes to detoxify at a clinic for alcohol abusers.
The U.S. has the might to prosecute people for cannabis but the right, no, not in a free society that is governed by the consent of the people.
Might does not make right.
To believe otherwise is fascism.
Posted by: Speller | 2008-01-23 10:54:30 AM
>"Show some respect, pothead, or I'll crush you like an insect. At 300 pounds I could drink your narrow butt under the table and still recite the alphabet backwards. Why is it so many people today equate critical thinking with gonchie pulls?"
Shane Matthews | 23-Jan-08 10:35:05 AM
Do you even read what you write, Shane?
Critical thinking?
Not you, Shane.
No self analysis for you.
Epsilon is a toughie for law and order.
Zero tolerance.
She has been given the history of the Eugenic philosophy behind marijuana prohibition.
It was prohibited by socialists(Dems in the U.S. and Liberals in Canada) when Eugenics was the flavour of the era and fascism was at it's apex.
You, Shane, are a fascist, and you oppose 'pot' for no other reason than bigotry.
You haven't a single fact to justify spending $Billions and ruining millions of lives.
(although you may have ulterior motives related to a law enforcement career built on persecuting 'dangerous' marijuana smokers) LOL
'Pothead', what next, will you call me a 'Jewboy'?
Posted by: Speller | 2008-01-23 11:19:21 AM
You've got some nerve, Speller. Demanding facts and then ignoring them. Yours is an endless font of bile, and it takes little to make you start overflowing with spite. Now then.
So Epsilon is a law-and-order toughie. There are worse things to be. Are you saying you would prefer no law, and no order? Of course not--no one wants that. You would defend YOUR law, and YOUR order, no less forcefully. The difference is she's on the right side of the current law, and you're not.
The prohibition of recreational marijuana smoking is nothing new; it dates to at least the 14th century in both Christian and Islamic countries. Anti-marijuana stipulations can be found in Islamic law, Papal bulls, and Parliamentary decrees. Reefer madness was running a little high in the 20s and 30s, true, but the fact that this happened concurrently with the rise of eugenics and fascism doesn't mean they're related.
First you claim pot doesn't affect psychomotor skills, and now this. Then you take the cheap way out like our resident professor emeritus by calling your opponent a fascist. You really have fallen off the deep end. Whatever you're on, I suggest you cut the dose--you plainly can't handle it.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-01-23 11:46:59 AM
>"Reefer madness was running a little high in the 20s and 30s"
There wasn't any 'reefer madness'. It was all a ploy by William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper and magazine tycoon.
The expected rebirth of cannabis hemp as a less expensive source of pulp for paper meant his millions of acres of prime timberland, and investment in wood pulp papermaking equipment, would soon be worth much less. In the 1920s, about the same time as the equipment was developed to economically mass-produce raw hemp into pulp and fiber for paper, he began the "Reefer Madness" hoax in his newspaper and magazine publications.
Emily Murphy picked up William Randolph Hearst's propaganda, published excerpts of it in McClean's Magazine under the pen name Janey Canuk, wrote the book 'The Black Candle' and these same lies about 'Reefer Madness' became the basis for marijuana prohibition in both Canada and the United States.
>"Then you take the cheap way out like our resident professor emeritus by calling your opponent a fascist."
You called me a 'pothead', Shane.
I'm just paying you in the same currency.
Don't like it? Don't dish it.
I mentioned Epsilon's pose as a law and order type because it's the against the law to vote if one isn't a citizen. Not that the law is always right or that order is superior to liberty, both should remain in balance with liberty being the basis for law, and only curtailed with just cause.
Posted by: Speller | 2008-01-23 12:02:19 PM
Speller you dumbass, my citizenship is none of your goddamned business and your assumptions are ridiculous.
You also have no idea what mom's are up against trying to raise children in such a baby-hating, "tolerant", laissez faire society. Your f***ed up version of Paradise might be OK for perfectly socially adapted genetically purified citizens but the fact is most people are not perfect and need rules. A large element of our population are under 18 or emotionally immature and make stupid decisions.
I hate big government but I hate anarchy, crime, stoned people and stoner apologists and academics like Prof Nutbar and you even more.
By the way jackass, I am a one beer girl and at 6 feet 175 pounds and having grown up in Glasgow, I could kick your sorry ass in a street fight any time any where you putrid, foul and pathetic puss.
Love, Epsi
Posted by: Epsilon | 2008-01-23 12:26:51 PM
>"You also have no idea what mom's are up against trying to raise children in such a baby-hating, "tolerant", laissez faire society. Your f***ed up version of Paradise might be OK for perfectly socially adapted genetically purified citizens but the fact is most people are not perfect and need rules. A large element of our population are under 18 or emotionally immature and make stupid decisions."
Epsilon | 23-Jan-08 12:26:51 PM
Wrong thread, Number 5.
You are a hypocrite for posing as a law and order type and not being a citizen when you talk about voting here.
Wow, you fascist Drug Warriors are a violent bunch.
I'm sure you learned your Glasgow street fighting skills before they made assault illegal in the UK.
LOL
No wonder you hate pot smokers.
You need someone to persecute for relief of your excess aggression.
Posted by: Speller | 2008-01-23 12:38:56 PM
If more potheads and apologists thereof stopped lighting up and instead salved their tormented souls by assaulting idiots like you we would have fewer idiots and fewer druggies.
Epsi
Posted by: Epsilon | 2008-01-23 12:47:11 PM
Speller wrote: “There wasn't any 'reefer madness'. It was all a ploy by William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper and magazine tycoon.”
By “reefer madness,” I meant the unsubstantiated paranoia surrounding the dangers of the so-called “devil’s weed,” as its detractors called it. And it was more than the actions of one man; Utah outlawed marijuana in 1915, and by 1931 more than half the U.S. had followed.
Speller wrote: “The expected rebirth of cannabis hemp as a less expensive source of pulp for paper meant his millions of acres of prime timberland, and investment in wood pulp papermaking equipment, would soon be worth much less. In the 1920s, about the same time as the equipment was developed to economically mass-produce raw hemp into pulp and fiber for paper, he began the "Reefer Madness" hoax in his newspaper and magazine publications.”
Well, that’s a conspiracy theory I hadn’t heard before. Most of the ones I’ve heard centre around DuPont not wanting competition for its new product, nylon. Of course, by the time nylon was invented, only about 1,200 acres of hemp was under cultivation in the U.S., down from 15,000 in 1850, and at this point it was cheaper to import so-called “Manila hemp” from the Philippines anyway.
Speller wrote: “Emily Murphy picked up William Randolph Hearst's propaganda, published excerpts of it in McClean's Magazine under the pen name Janey Canuk, wrote the book 'The Black Candle' and these same lies about 'Reefer Madness' became the basis for marijuana prohibition in both Canada and the United States.”
Bologna. The government began to control narcotics in 1914. Pot isn’t a narcotic, but because of its psychoactive properties many people considered it one. In 1937, the Marijuana Tax Act forbade the non-medicinal use of marijuana, and required all those who produced it for medicinal purposes to pay a tax. In 1942 it was removed from the list of approved drugs because of its psychoactive side effects and “addictive qualities,” essentially closing the last loophole. There was no conspiracy, no cover-up. Marijuana merely walked the same road that tobacco is walking today.
Speller wrote: “You called me a 'pothead', Shane. I'm just paying you in the same currency. Don't like it? Don't dish it.”
You promote the use of pot, and frankly your wildly disjointed reasoning suggests you’re under its influence. I, on the other hand, have never given you just cause to believe that I am a fascist, nor has Epsilon. Your knee-jerk tossing of insults says more about you than it does about your opponents.
Speller wrote: “I mentioned Epsilon's pose as a law and order type because it's the against the law to vote if one isn't a citizen. Not that the law is always right or that order is superior to liberty, both should remain in balance with liberty being the basis for law, and only curtailed with just cause.”
Getting high is not a fundamental liberty.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-01-23 1:12:05 PM
Speller wrote: “Irrelevant. Marijuana is neither and opiate nor a narcotic.”
Relevant because you seem to think that the longer people have been using a drug, the more harmless it must be. There’s no point in mentioning it otherwise.
Speller wrote: “At the very least you should be able to come up with actual verifiable accounts of harm in the New World prior to marijuana prohibition. These accounts do not exist.”
Why? Because you say so?
Speller wrote: “Why? Because marijuana was prohibited to keep down Chinks in Canada, and Niggers/Spics in the U.S.*, not because there was demonstrable harm.”
More conspiracy theories and revisionist rubbish. Sources please, and by that I mean credible ones, not quotes from “Clayoquot Protestors Weekly.”
Speller wrote: “Shane wrote: ‘The point is that by the time you approached the L50 point of marijuana you'd be so hopelessly inebriated that you wouldn't be able to move.’ And your source of this information is what? Link please.”
Your wish is my command:
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/nc/nc1e.htm
If I interpret the data correctly, then I, a 300-pound man, would have to smoke about three pounds of the most potent B.C. Bud out there, or thirty pounds of typical Woodstock-era weed—about 250,000 times the normal dose—before I stood a 50% chance of croaking. On the day you manage to smoke that much at one sitting and can still move your hand to your face afterward, I will print a front-page retraction in the New York Times. Fair?
Speller wrote: "And how fast do you think people burn fat, Shane? Mini-buzzes? Sounds like a cup of espresso to me. You want people to be jailed as criminals for mini-buzzes?”
If they go on a diet or take strenuous exercise before breakfast, it can be pretty fast. Only a small amount of the THC in a doobie reaches your brain; most of it gets stashed. I’ve never heard a cup of espresso speak to me, so I don’t know what it’s supposed to sound like. (If yours is speaking to you, STOP SMOKING NOW.) And while I don’t advocate tossing people in clink for mini-buzzes, I do worry about the potential for car crashes and the like.
Speller wrote: “Reliable accounts of zoning out for days? Horseshit. Link please.”
Zoning out SUDDENLY, DAYS AFTER last hit and being sober, DUE TO SUDDEN AND RAPID BURNING OF FAT. That was not meant to intimate that they stayed stoned indefinitely.
Speller wrote: “Sober after a night of boozing? Booze is the number one cause of downtime calling in sick for employees in Canada. Maybe you don't know how long it takes to detoxify at a clinic for alcohol abusers.”
They’re hung over, not still drunk. Drinking enough alcohol to require 24 hours to metabolize would result in death from alcohol poisoning. The LD50 of alcohol is well established and easily calculated from body weight. And any idiot knows that people aren’t drunk, or stoned, during detox. It is the urge to have more that is being purged, not the last dose. Duh.
Speller wrote: “The U.S. has the might to prosecute people for cannabis but the right, no, not in a free society that is governed by the consent of the people.”
Really? The American people, both free and democratically governed, seem to disagree. Any country has the “might” to pass its own laws. More anti-American nonsense.
Speller wrote: Might does not make right. To believe otherwise is fascism.”
Link please.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-01-23 1:33:55 PM
I've been gone a few days, and I see that Shane is still trying to bully everyone who has an opinion. I got no reply to my offer to meet him in person, so I assume like all bullies, he's also a coward. A big fat coward.
The arguments against decriminalizing marijuana will never hold up under scrutiny.
C'mon Shane. I'm spotting you 100 lbs. I'll be checking my e-mail.
Posted by: dp | 2008-01-23 1:34:55 PM
DP wrote: "I've been gone a few days, and I see that Shane is still trying to bully everyone who has an opinion. I got no reply to my offer to meet him in person, so I assume like all bullies, he's also a coward. A big fat coward."
Screamed the dust speck who's so full of piss and vinegar he won't even give us his real name.
DP wrote: "The arguments against decriminalizing marijuana will never hold up under scrutiny."
Says you.
DP wrote: "C'mon Shane. I'm spotting you 100 lbs. I'll be checking my e-mail."
You're the one dropping the gauntlet; why don't you e-mail ME? With your full name, please, and proof of your occupation as a boxing coach. I may not know how to box, but I CAN hit a four-inch disc moving at 35 miles an hour at 15 yards, or a stationery 8-inch disc at 200 yards. Since you are the one demanding satisfaction, the choice of weapons is mine. Name your second.
By the way, did you want to debate the topic at all, or did you just drop by here to pull my gonch like a locker-room troll?
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-01-23 1:56:23 PM
Ooops... I hate to get in the middle of a street brawl but...
Can we redirect this thread to some good back-and-forth arguments, and skip the name-calling?
Shane: The link between prohibition (yes, prohibition), and violence is fairly clear, and fairly well established. Take a look:
http://aler.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/1/1/78
There's also this interesting paper that purports to do a cross-country analysis of violence and gun control.
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-2186(200110)44%3A2%3C615%3AVGADAC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-V
Miron finds no significance between gun control and violence but does, interestingly, discover that enforcement of prohibition--whether drug or alcohol--correlates well with levels of violence. The more serious the government is about enforcing prohibition, the more serious are the consequences in terms of violence.
There are plenty of other studies and articles that I'm happy to cite, if necessary. But I think the case for my point is fairly clear: Enforce prohibition, and you get more violence. End prohibition, and you see a sharp drop in violence.
I'm sorry if my analogy was not perspicuous enough at the beginning. But I hope I've clarified here what I meant about the link between violence (and particularly gun violence) and prohibition of either marijuana or alcohol.
I believe I also said that the link is between an easily made substance, with a high price and low cost of manufacturing, and with an inelastic demand curve. That's true of just about all drugs, including coffee.
What I didn't make clear, and what I think largely accounts for the differences in rates of violence in Canada vs. the U.S. during alcohol, and now during drug, prohibition, is the *enforcement* of prohibition in the U.S. vs. the lack of it here in Canada. Smoke and sell pot in Canada and you get a slap on the wrist. Smoke and sell it in the U.S., and you sometimes get ten-to-life. A criminal faced with life in prison has a lower expected cost to engaging in violence, than a criminal facing a $200 fine.
Posted by: P.M. Jaworski | 2008-01-23 2:17:49 PM
But P.M., violent crime in the U.S. has trended significantly *downward* since they started incarcerating all offenders of any stripe for longer stretches. As many critics of the U.S. incarceration rate are quick to note, many if not most of the new inmates are in for drug-related offences. As noted elsewhere, correlation does not imply causation. But from where I'm standing it makes more sense to conclude that crime rates are down because more criminals are in jail than because the U.S. is easing up on its drug laws--especially since it isn't.
Alcohol prohibition is not the same as drug prohibition. Almost everybody drinks alcohol and it's too much a part of our society to change, at least by a stroke of the pen as was attempted in 1919. Ditto for firearms--over a quarter of Canadian households own at least one gun. Several generations of negative publicity can greatly reduce usage, as has been the case with tobacco and driving while drunk. Hunting is also less popular than it used to be, though there are signs of a resurgence in the face of increasing animal populations and the quest for the ultimate in organic foods.
Marijuana, by contrast, is merely a youthful curiosity that most people outgrow. I agree it's over-prohibited, but that doesn't mean the U.S. has no right to control its entry into their country. The U.S. has the right to control the entry of dental floss into their country. Even legal products can be illegally imported--an act known as "smuggling"--and no one argues that smuggling should be legal. Do not conflate smuggling laws with drug laws.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-01-23 2:30:18 PM
Shane>Utah outlawed marijuana in 1915, and by 1931 more than half the U.S. had followed."
Speller-Utah outlawed marijuana for religious reasons.
As Mormons they are against euphoriants.
The rest of the States came along separately as they were influenced by a combination of Eugenic philosophy which caused them to demonize groups of either Hispanics or Negroes.
1898: The Spanish American War erupts. During the war, the marijuana-smoking army of Panco Villa seizes 800,000 acres of prime Mexican timberland belonging to newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst.
The timber from this land was used to manufacture newsprint for Hearst's publishing empire. Hearst begins a 30-year propaganda campaign denouncing Spaniards, Mexican-Americans and Latinos, portraying Mexicans as lazy pot-smoking layabouts.
Yellow Journalism
The sinking of the Maine on February 15, 1898 precipitated the Spanish-American War and also popularized the phrase Remember the Maine! In subsequent years, the sinking of the Maine has been an area of great speculation. The cause of the explosion that sank the ship is still a mystery that remains unsolved to this day.
The American press, however, had no doubts about who was responsible for sinking the Maine. It was the cowardly Spanish, they cried. William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal even published pictures. They showed how Spanish saboteurs had fastened an underwater mine to the Maine and had detonated it from shore.
As one of the few sources of public information, newspapers had reached unprecedented influence and importance. Journalistic giants, such as Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer of the World, viciously competed for the reader's attention.
Newspapers sent hundreds of reporters, artists, and photographers south to recount Spanish atrocities. The correspondents, including such notables as author Stephen Crane and artist Frederick Remington, found little to report on when they arrived.
"There is no war," Remington wrote to his boss. "Request to be recalled."
Cartoon representing Cuba's uneasy situation in the 1890s Remington's boss, William Randolph Hearst, sent a cable in reply: "Please remain. You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war." Hearst was true to his word.
For weeks after the Maine disaster, the Journal devoted more than eight pages a day to the story. Not to be outdone, other papers followed Hearst's lead. Hundreds of editorials demanded that the Maine and American honor be avenged. Many Americans agreed. Soon a rallying cry could be heard everywhere -- in the papers, on the streets, and in the halls of Congress: "Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain."
Speller wrote earlier: “Emily Murphy picked up William Randolph Hearst's propaganda, published excerpts of it in McLean’s Magazine under the pen name Janey Canuk, wrote the book 'The Black Candle' and these same lies about 'Reefer Madness' became the basis for marijuana prohibition in both Canada and the United States.”
Shane>The government began to control narcotics in 1914. Pot isn’t a narcotic, but because of its psychoactive properties many people considered it one. In 1937, the Marijuana Tax Act forbade the non-medicinal use of marijuana, and required all those who produced it for medicinal purposes to pay a tax. In 1942 it was removed from the list of approved drugs because of its psychoactive side effects and “addictive qualities,” essentially closing the last loophole. There was no conspiracy, no cover-up. Marijuana merely walked the same road that tobacco is walking today.
Spellers research-
1907-1923: Prohibition, Legislation, Propaganda
Then Deputy Minister of Labour, William Lyon Mackenzie King, was appointed to investigate and settle Chinese property damage claims. During his investigation, Mackenzie King discovered the use of opium among the Chinese population, and hit upon a unique solution to the labour crisis. Mackenzie King decided that the only means of eliminating the civil unrest was to eliminate the Chinese. In his capacity as a private citizen he submitted a report titled "The Need for the Suppression of Opium Traffic in Canada". This report was largely based on sensational newspaper stories depicting the ruin of white women caused by opium use.
(these articles were written by Mrs. Emily Murphy under the pen name Janey Canuck)
Mrs. Emily Murphy>
"[Murphy's] work and writing reveal a woman with an unshakable sense of the entitlement of her class to rule over those who were less competent and less worthy." Mrs. Murphy, the first woman in the British Empire to be named a police magistrate, along with Mrs. McClung, a novelist and legislator, and Mrs. McKinney, the first woman sworn into the Alberta Legislature, left another distasteful legacy.
It was thanks to their efforts that the Alberta Sexual Sterilization Act was adopted in 1928. Mrs. Murphy and her pals toured the province making speeches promoting the benefits of sterilizing fellow Albertans who didn't make the grade.
The act stood until 1972; in that 44-year period, sterilizations of 4,725 Albertans deemed to be of a lower genetic makeup were authorized.'
FROM>
http://www.sobersecondthought.com/files/infamousfive.html
In Canada William Lyon McKenzie King and Mrs. Emily Murphy were the two movers and shakers who made the Narcotics Control Act and marijuana prohibition a reality, based not upon science or an interest in reducing crime in Canada, but upon racism and Eugenics.
William Lyon Mackenzie King>
Brian Mulroney on W.L.Mackenzie King's anti-semitism in the National Post, Monday, February 10, 2003
On Feb. 10, 1937, Prime Minister Mackenzie King met an elderly Russian immigrant who related that he had built a furniture and clothing business on Rideau and Banks Streets, had three sons and a daughter and was now retired -- a true Canadian success story. King recorded in his diary: "The only unfortunate part ... is that the Jews having acquired foothold ... it will not be long before this part of Ottawa will become more or less possessed by them."
A few months later, King visited Germany to meet Chancellor Adolf Hitler, and recorded: "My sizing up ... was that he is really one who truly loves his fellow man ... There was a liquid quality about (his eyes) which indicates keen perception and profound sympathy. Calm, composed, and one could see how particularly humble folk would have come to have profound love for the man. As I talked with him I could not but think of Joan of Arc. He is distinctly a mystic."
The following day, our PM had lunch with the Nazi foreign minister Konstantin von Neurath, who "admitted that they had taken some pretty rough steps ... but the truth was the country was going to pieces ... He said to me that I would have loathed living in Berlin with the Jews, and the way in which they had increased their numbers in the city, and were taking possession of its more important part. He said there was no pleasure in going to a theatre which was filled with them. Many of them were very coarse and vulgar and assertive. They were getting control of all the business, the finance, and ... it was necessary to get them out to have the Germans really control their own city and affairs."
And how did Canada's prime minister react to these diabolically racist and extremely ominous comments by one of the most powerful leaders of the Third Reich?
"I wrote a letter of some length by hand to von Neurath whom I like exceedingly. He is, if there ever was one, a genuinely kind, good man."
In 1923 the Liberal government under William Lyon Mackenzie King banned Chinese immigration completely with the passage of the Chinese Immigration Act of 1923. With this act, the Chinese became the only people that Canada specifically excluded on the basis of race. During the next 25 years more and more laws against the Chinese were passed. Most jobs were closed to Chinese men and women, so many Chinese opened their own restaurant and laundry businesses. In British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Ontario, Chinese employers were not allowed to hire white females, so most Chinese businesses became Chinese-only.
The Mackenzie King government passed the Opium and Narcotic Drug Act in the same year, 1923.
Shane> “Getting high is not a fundamental liberty."
Speller-Neither is getting drunk yet Canadians, including yourself Shane, have this liberty while they have had the liberty to smoke marijuana abridged for no reason that stands up to examination.
The removal of any liberty, without just cause, is a blow to liberty in general, and the cause of the abridgement of the liberty to possess and use cannabis was not only unjust but clearly evil.
Speller wrote earlier: “Irrelevant. Marijuana is neither an opiate nor a narcotic.”
Shane>"Relevant because you seem to think that the longer people have been using a drug, the more harmless it must be. There’s no point in mentioning it otherwise."
Speller-Not at all.
Yours is a straw man argument which doesn't address the linking of marijuana with narcotics.
Marijuana has NOT been demonstrated to be harmful or addictive, like narcotics, but is conflated with marijuana by fascist Drug Warriors to demonize marijuana in place of a real argument on the Drug Warrior's part.
Speller wrote earlier: “At the very least you should be able to come up with actual verifiable accounts of harm in the New World prior to marijuana prohibition. These accounts do not exist.”
Shane>Why? Because you say so?
Speller-Because the War against Marijuana is a tissue of lies, that's why.
Speller wrote earlier: “Shane wrote: ‘The point is that by the time you approached the L50 point of marijuana you'd be so hopelessly inebriated that you wouldn't be able to move.’ And your source of this information is what? Link please.”
Shane>Your wish is my command:
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/Library/studies/nc/nc1e.htm
Shane>“If I interpret the data correctly, then I, a 300-pound man, would have to smoke about three pounds of the most potent B.C. Bud out there, or thirty pounds of typical Woodstock-era weed—about 250,000 times the normal dose—before I stood a 50% chance of croaking. On the day you manage to smoke that much at one sitting and can still move your hand to your face afterward, I will print a front-page retraction in the New York Times. Fair?”
Shane
Speller-Nope, all tests were on laboratory animals other than humans. With dose levels as high as were used in the clinical tests the vehicle that the THC was extracted with could have been the killer. The rats, dogs, and monkeys all had different causes which indicate a reaction unique to their animal physiology.
Your extrapolation is nothing more than a prejudicial guess.
Speller wrote earlier: "And how fast do you think people burn fat, Shane? Mini-buzzes? Sounds like a cup of espresso to me. You want people to be jailed as criminals for mini-buzzes?
Shane> Only a small amount of the THC in a doobie reaches your brain; most of it gets stashed.
Speller-No, most of it is exhaled, bigoted reasoning on your part again.
Speller wrote earlier: “Sober after a night of boozing? Booze is the number one cause of downtime calling in sick for employees in Canada. Maybe you don't know how long it takes to detoxify at a clinic for alcohol abusers.”
Shane>They’re hung over, not still drunk. Drinking enough alcohol to require 24 hours to metabolize would result in death from alcohol poisoning. The LD50 of alcohol is well established and easily calculated from body weight. And any idiot knows that people aren’t drunk, or stoned, during detox. It is the urge to have more that is being purged, not the last dose. Duh.
From your link, Shane, above>"The monkeys and dogs that survived the intravenous injection of THC recovered completely within five to nine days."
Speller-And this after massive doses that were administered to determine lethality.
Duh is right, though Shane, hung over is impaired and still under the influence of alcohol.
The question dealt with how long THC/alcohol remained in the body which is about a toxin needing to be purged.
Posted by: Speller | 2008-01-23 3:08:36 PM
You know, Speller, for your incredibly voluminous outpouring of venom and your quarrelsome demands for links, you provide only one yourself, to a Website with an attitude called "Sober Second Thought." And the link itself? An opinion piece. Give me a break.
Also, there WAS an LD50 established for monkeys. Although all monkeys injected with 92 mg/kg of THC survived, all those injected with 128mg/kg died within 30 minutes. You are so desperate to avoid having to state the anathemically obvious--that THC in sufficient doses will kill--that you cast about wild theories such as that the vehicle used for extraction might be the killer, that the reactions are all unique to different species, most of it is exhaled, blah, blah, blah. All totally unsupported conjectures without a shred of proof. Monkeys are very close to humans in physiology and provide a good approximation. So you're a top research scientist now? As if.
It is interesting to note that you attack yellow journalism so much in the rest of your post, because this hate-filled, paranoia-pervaded, revisionist rant could be a textbook example. You don't source a single fact or a single conclusion, and when all else fails, frisbee the word "fascist" as fast as your little chattering hole can huck it in an attempt to shriek your opponent into silence. Your posts have degenerated into panic-stricken prattle.
By the way, hangovers aren't cause by the influence of alcohol. They're caused by dehydration, the effects of which can persist long after the alcohol departs.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-01-23 3:30:09 PM
P.S. You are the first, to my knowledge, to link the prohibition of marijuana to the sinking of the Maine, or to the rise of the Third Reich. The fact that the Mexicans were derided as hempheads is not proof of the seeds of a conspiracy to outlaw it forty years later. And just because Nazi Germany rose in the same time period pot was outlawed does not mean there's a link between the two. Honestly,dDo you think there is a conspiracy behind every five-year-old's lemonade stand?
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-01-23 3:37:51 PM
And it occurs to me, Speller, that your tactics of taking quotes out of context and presenting them in a froth of outrage in order to push a questionable agenda is taking more than a few pages from the books of the very people you so bitterly denounce. I guess it's true--you become what you hate.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-01-23 3:46:57 PM
I agree that violent crime rates are going down, not up, in the U.S., Shane. I also agree that more aggressive incarceration rates may account for this.
One thing I want to disentangle, however, is the issue of prohibition-related violence (or violence linked to illegal drugs), and other forms of violence. I believe that what we are witnessing is reductions in other forms of violence, which more than account for the rates of violence in the drug-related category.
The increased incarceration rates are primarily for non-violent drug offenders. The violent drug-offenders should be treated like all criminals, since aggressive violence is unacceptable regardless of why it's being engaged in.
There's a lot that is tangled up here, and it's important for my point that we capture only the prohibition-related crime data and facts.
Posted by: P.M. Jaworski | 2008-01-23 4:10:56 PM
You're approaching the whole thing backwards, P.M. You shouldn't be cherry-picking data because "it's important for your point"; instead, you should be considering ALL data and then making your point based on that. In other words, if you've already decided, going in, what you want the data to prove, and to use only data that proves it, you can't help but arrive at a biased conclusion.
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-01-23 4:37:44 PM
My apologies, Shane, I guess I was unclear again.
My point is that we need to disentangle the violence that is a result of people using drugs, and prohibition, vs. violence that has something else as its source.
A "crime of passion" (like a sober husband walking in on his sober wife making love to a sober stranger, and soberly beating him up) won't tell us much about the drug war. It would be a data point for something else.
I have also provided links to studies that purport to show a link between enforcement of prohibition and increases in violence.
My point was: End prohibition and you end prohibition-related violence. The relevant counter to that is to show that the rates of violence that are independent of prohibition (like a drug-induced bar brawl, or whatever) would increase with legalizing drugs at a rate higher than the violence that is stemmed by making drugs legal.
Alternatively, the data might turn out to show that, while prohibition has a net increase in violence, the violence is targeted at a particular sub-group within society (like amongst thieves, or drug addicts, and so on), whereas legalizing drugs would increase violence amongst a different sub-group of society (like innocent children, or teenagers, or innocent by-standers), coupled with the claim that we should spend more resources on the latter sub-group than the former (put differently, that violence amongst the latter group is worse, all things considered, than violence amongst the former).
I have become persuaded that drug prohibition is, on net, worse than legalizing drugs (especially marijuana). This is based primarily on the data that I've looked at, and the studies that I've read--including a Fraser Institute study, a Special Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs, and countless other studies from all sides of the political spectrum.
I would be happy to admit that keeping drugs illegal is a net benefit in terms of violence, theft, and other *real* crimes, but I just simply have not come across enough studies purporting to demonstrate this. Could you point me to some?
Posted by: P.M. Jaworski | 2008-01-23 5:33:07 PM
The only problem with all those studies, P.M., is that marijuana has not been legal within most people's lifetimes, certainly not in the modern world, and so no one knows for sure what would happen if it were legalized. I know thing that would NOT go away is the illegal drug trade. Marijuana isn't just illegal in North America; it's illegal almost everywhere on Earth except a few placed in Western Europe. Growing for those markets would continue to be lucrative. The U.S. was a dry island of Prohibition compared to a wet world; what these studies propose is a smoking Canada in a non-smoking world. Perhaps the problem wasn't prohibition per se, but trying to stem such an overwhelming tide?
Posted by: Shane Matthews | 2008-01-23 10:56:28 PM
While I usually agree with Professor Narveson, I think he has missed (or glossed over) one essential element in this particular Marc Emery case.
As I understand Professor Narveson's theories of moral philosophy, liberty is the only right (all others being derivative or special cases). To acquire a Right (for example, the right to smoke what you like), it is first nnecessary to agree (contractually) with others in your community/society. Marc Emery has not done this, in fact he does exactly the opposite. In Mr. Emery's case, his commitment to defending/granting the Liberty of others does not extend to those areas of life within Mr. Emery's control. He appears to want to insist that government grant him certain liberties, but Mr. Emery himself is something of a censorious s.o.b. with a poor understanding of the importance of freedom of speech and how it really works.
I refer specifically to Mr. Enery's BC Marijuana Party website, where anyone who dares question the great man's henchmen is summarily excluded from further discussion. This is a trait that Mr. Emery shares with the federal Libertarian Party, of which Professor Narveson was a Director.
So, the question is - how much effort should we put into defending the Liberty of Marc Emery, when he shows little or no willingness to defend anyone else's Liberty on his political party forum - where he has the power to demonstrate his true colours? The same is true of the Libertarian Party, which currently censors large numbers of people for nothing more than questioning the seriousness of commitment of the the party politicians. On that forum where they have the power to demonstrate the seriousness of their commitment to freedom of speech - they act as censors.
I would like Professor Narveson to explain why anyone should defend the Liberty of people who attack our Freedom of Speech in those venues where they have the power to defend it.
Posted by: Ken Wiebe | 2008-02-05 7:25:52 PM
Dear Professor Narveson,
Marc Emery has claimed that Ayn Rand's writing inspired his life of activism. Can you explain how selfish intentions might motivate an individual to choose the life of activism that Marc Emery has chosen? Taking ethics classes at three different universities in the US has lead me to believe that many professors of ethics would have a difficult time doing so. Here Ayn Rand is a successful literary figure responsible for attracting young minds to philosophy while never contributing anything substantial to the history of ideas. If only she had earned a PhD or began Atlas Shrugged with an abstract maybe she would have accomplished more. Do you agree? What if Marc Emery had not been fighting for decades to have pot people released from confinement but had instead been fighting to have pigs released from confinement? Would his situation show up on the radar of any intellectuals that you know? How would those intellectuals prefer to paint his choices? Selfless, self-sacrificial, altruistic? As I see things Marc Emery is bringing to light far more than the truth about Marijuana and those who smoke it and it would serve academic philosophers well to take notice.
Sincerely,
Jack McGuirk
Boulder, CO
Posted by: Jack McGuirk | 2008-02-28 9:42:05 AM
THC is THC!
End Of Discussion
Posted by: Roman Stone | 2008-03-03 8:35:51 PM
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