Should medical marijuana be kept from minors at all costs?
We should also ask:
Should Sheriff Pat Hedges, the local deputies and the federal thugs who accompanied them on the raid of Charley Lynch’s medical marijuana dispensary be arrested and tried for crimes against humanity?
If the entrenched legislative bodies and criminal justice system will not properly deal with these perps then it is time to create a replacement system.
Via Winston Smith.
The French are taking a step, albeit a small one, that the rest of the world, especially the United States, should follow:
France’s military will slash its ranks by 54,000 personnel and close dozens of air, army and other bases in an overhaul meant to slim forces at home while making it easier and faster to deploy troops abroad, the prime minister announced Thursday.
Prime Minister Francois Fillon said the 15 percent cut in manpower and base closings will save billions of dollars but still permit an agile military suited to the country’s security needs.
This small beginning in demilitarization will open the doors to our future just a bit wider. A future of free human beings creating and evolving rather than nation states destroying and killing.
It is unfortunate that opposition to these clearly desirable actions comes from those who live off the milk of the state:
Officials in towns slated to lose their bases argue the plan will be disastrous for local economies and say they will fight the closures.
Fillon said he understood people’s fears and promised $503 million in aid to the most affected regions, many in France’s depressed northeast. He also said measures would be taken to encourage investment in the those regions.
Fight the closures they might but their futures will be much stronger if built locally rather than on the backs of taxpayers and at the whim of national or state governments.
These bases should not have existed in the first place and that they have is no rationale for either maintaining them or subsidizing local economies once they are gone.
Radley: I don’t mean to mock…
Kip: My Point is not to mock…
The subjects handle the mocking just fine…
Mark Brady asks:
…presidential hopeful Barack Obama yesterday explained his foreign policy. He called for “America — once again — to lead”, to be “ready to engage the world”, “to lead the world anew.”
Does it ever occur to the Columbia-and-Harvard-educated Barack Obama that perhaps the world does not want to be “led” by the United States?
I’m sure it has no more occurred to him than to the current occupant, to mccain or to any of the previous presidents.
Nor has it probably occurred to him that most of us, we the people, don’t want to be “led” either. At least not by fiat.
Rather, be a good government*: do your basic job of dealing with perps who use force or fraud to get their way; deliver a judicial system that provides timely services and response times; and leave the rest of us to our lives, our liberty and our pursuit of happiness.
And, as far as leadership goes: set a good example and if you can be persuasive enough perhaps you will generate a consensus to complete certain activities. Otherwise, go away.
*Possible oxymoron acknowledged.
Thoreau is unhappy with the ongoing revelations of executive branch lawlessness and the failure of our supposed great system of checks and balances to reign in immoral and illegal executive branch behavior. What to do?
Yes, an argument can be made that however much Reid and Pelosi and their cohort deserve punishment, the other side deserves even more punishment. That’s assuming that you continue to accept the premises of the system, and dutifully choose between the party that commits the crimes and the party with a leadership that will not actually stop the crimes.
Well, a close look at the last 100 years might suggest that both parties have been busy both committing a wide variety of legislative crimes, coming up with ways to mask the crimes and, more importantly, committing even more crimes of a moral nature.
Thoreau than explores possible courses of action in the upcoming election season:
If nobody else is voting third party, it’s irrational for you to vote third party. However small the difference between the parties might be, if there’s any difference at all, and if those are the only viable options, then you are being completely rational by voting for the guys who promised to at least pick the undigested corn kernels out of the sh!t sandwich.
This sounds to me much like the old “I chose the lesser evil argument.” I’ve mistakenly gone down that road myself more than once. I’m reminded of this:
Moreover, if we look at the techniques of totalitarian government, it is obvious that the argument of “the lesser evil”–far from being raised only from the otside by those who do not belong to the ruling elite–is one of the mechanisms built into the machinery of terror and criminality. Acceptance of lesser evils is consciously used in conditioning the government officials as well as the population at large to the acceptance of evil as such.
Hannah Arendt, “Personal Responsibiity Under Dictatorship,” in Responsibility, pgs 36-37
If you have not read this essay previously it is time to do so now; if you have read it before, read it again (PDF).
As to the title question: we can start by withdrawing our support from a broken system lurching toward an abyss. We can follow by encouraging others to withdraw their support and to begin working together to build a new system truly built on the idea that we each have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.