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The Wrong Kind of Radicalism
Let’s talk about marijuana. On second thought, let’s not. Instead, let’s talk about counterproductive political movements and how they turn people off from otherwise worthwhile messages. The protest this past Saturday outside the White House at which proponents of legalized marijuana decided to light up at 4:20 PM present the worst kind of stupidity. Honestly, grow-up, people. If a bunch of home distilling enthusiasts decided to get drunk in public outside the White House, they would have been arrested. The same should have happened to these yahoos.
Reason Magazine — for my money, the world’s greatest political magazine — covered the protests and posted the above video through their youtube channel. This was unbelievably stupid. The way to win an argument for liberty is to show that freedom will be matched with responsibility; the way to lose the same argument is to demonstrate that the freedom will be enjoyed solely by libertine scofflaws.
A reggae music and hippie-themed vibe sure is fun — and I’m all for letting one’s freak flag fly on occasion — but Reason and the liberty movement are just consigning themselves to a losing argument when they behave this way. Congratulations on setting back liberty by acting like myopic children.
The public will not buy a message of radical liberty unless it is coupled with one of radical responsibility.
Published in Domestic Policy
Not fearing. Recognizing.
In the language of our forefathers — it’s knowing you’re a sinner and you need a savior. It directs us to something (or Someone) transcendent. And in that discomfiting paradoxical way of things, the humility of it makes us more fully human.
What, unlike the picture of Mr. Duvall in To kill a mockingbird?
I meant to say–but hit the 250 limit–that the claim that everyone is free to create their own selves or define their concept of existence, as the last, most humiliating man called Kennedy would say, is really something close to its opposite. It does not claim the freedom to define humanity–it asserts the impossibility of doing so. It is staring into the abyss, saying, freedom means having nothing left to lose.
Just like relativism is not really a fountain of tolerance, but one of fanaticism. It does nothing for civilization to say that the difference between us & a cannibal is a matter of taste…
There is far less of pride than of desperation in this freedom. & that is far harder to admonish such that people find their way back to faith. There is little with which loveless lives can be threatened. There is little strength to stir in people who half-suspect & half-believe that nothing worthwhile is available to them.
I’m a Laplanderphobe. It’s true.
I like their dogs, though.
A contemneress of Laplanders who do not lap is probably the better title. The least likable part of this tendency to psycho-analyze one’s adversaries is the suggestion that they are afraid. No, it is laplanders who should fear us!
Ditto and Ditto.
Aside: Legalizing marijuana isn’t radical. It’s merely a return to the pre-1937 status quo.
Alaska legalized marijuana a year and a half ago. One of the main selling points was that criminals sell pot because it is illegal and risk makes it profitable. Remove the risk, remove the profit, everyone wins. What wasn’t taken into account is that criminals gotta criminal. Crime has spiked. Big time. Burglaries, murder, car theft and the like. Spice deaths are almost epidemic. Heroin is making the news. The pro-legalization excuse? The state has not been clear on it’s regulation of the pending business boom.
Reactionaries for liberty & responsibility? ;)
As I’ve said before. Libertarianism ain’t conservatism.
Crime has spiked everywhere where drug enforcement laws have loosened. And the addiction and over dose rates as well. There’s no such thing as legalizing pot and it not effecting the rest of society.
Or not:
http://mic.com/articles/110344/14-years-after-portugal-decriminalized-all-drugs-here-s-what-s-happening#.yFUTL4SCD
I feel much better.
Perhaps it is worth mentioning that “hypocrisy” does not mean failing to live up to your own standards. It means lying about what standards you hold. Everyone fails, sometimes, to live up to their own standards, but that does not make everyone a hypocrite.
Well, in a Christian world where conscience is a big deal, it does.
But in the rather more reasonable political world, only those people who are thought to profess for advantage or prestige principles to which they do not hew are called hypocrites.
I can’t speak to Portugal but around here crime, addiction, and overdose rates have gone up.
New York?
Other than a pot shop popping up on the corner of nearly every intersection (they’re starting to close now — too much competition), there’s no noticeable change in the lives of ordinary (non pot-consuming) citizens here in Colorado.
The worst unanticipated consequence I’ve heard of has been an increase in pediatric emergencies due to kids getting into their parents’ edibles.
Los Angeles hasn’t seen any marked increase in crime related to the legalization of medical marijuana.
Given that the post is from a libertarian criticizing other libertarians for playing up liberty without responsibility, I’d have it’d be more welcomed by more SoCon members.
The worst kind of stupidity?
Not sure I agree with you. I didn’t find the video or protest so stupid and awful.
I don’t think pro-pot people like liberty to begin with. These people probably mostly support Bernie.
People who think we should just keep marijuana laws the same as they are now could also be called myopic children. The culture is changing, so constitutional conservatives should argue for the best possible changes to marijuana laws, not just mock pot-heads and pretend we can just keep going with the laws as they are.
That is a great line. The question is how to promote liberty coupled with responsibility in the context of the marijuana issue. It’s not easy, because we can’t look back to previous cultures who dealt with this issue, as we can with wine and alcohol.
Frank Soto once said to me that drug legalization is a big problem for libertarians. Not because it is wrong, but that it is wrong to lead with. There are lots of libertarian things people buy into, but legal crack is not one of them.
This is one of those “in your face” moments that lose the people you are, in theory, trying to win over.
I don’t presume to treat pot any differently than wine or alcohol.
I agree.
You can hate on pot heads, but unless there are some reasonable ways to address the issue of pot legalization, it will go the way of same-sex-marriage and abortion: the left will get everything it wants.
There are pot heads and then there are people who behave like the people in that video. I have no problem with the former. I have a political problem with the later not a moral one. Let their freak flags fly, but don’t tarnish my political movement with it.
I’ve been reading Reason for decades. For the record, that’s not my take.
I tend to be for anything that manages to chip away at the parts of the State away at which chipping ought to be done.
But those people almost certainly are not part of your/our political movement.
I have more of a problem with people on the right who don’t talk more about pot legalization. They could score some really easy political points, and the argument to treat pot basically like alcohol seems consistent with conservative values. Of course many conservatives disagree, and detest pot and pot-heads; but if Trump has shown us anything it’s that in the end people aren’t as principled when it comes to social positions as we thought.
I consider myself a Libertarian. Or at least that is as close as I come to one of our common definitions. Drug legalization isn’t even on my radar.
Tom, you don’t get to determine how your argument will be received. Stop straightening my timber.