It may take you one hour to watch "60" Minutes, but it'll take some others quite a bit longer.
Window sill plant:
Posted on 03/03/2006 5:46:33 AM PST by headsonpikes
Pot crusader Marc Emery says his appearance on the news program 60 Minutes on Sunday will be an opportunity for Americans to see him as just an ordinary guy who regards himself as the Luke Skywalker against their government's Darth Vader tactics.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
About one more hour to "60 minutes".
"What's love got to do, got to do with it"?
Of course everyone has an evolution in thinking. He introduced me to Ayn Rand and many others. I also agree with the quote.
Pretty boring stuff for a know-it-all teenager, but (looking back) daaaammmmnnnn, it showed me the value of objective thought.
It may take you one hour to watch "60" Minutes, but it'll take some others quite a bit longer.
Window sill plant:
Starting now. Talk to you later.
Love the pic.
This article appeared in Consent #1 (January-February 1988)
WHO SPEAKS FOR BUSINESS?
- Marc Emery
My bookstore, City Lights Bookshop, which is located in downtown London, was open for three Sundays during December, l986. As a result, police laid charges against me --- and I'm proud of it.
December 1986 was a period during which many of Ontario's retailers were anxiously awaiting (and expecting) a Supreme Court decision reaffirming their right to operate their stores on Sunday --- and many of them chose to exercise their rights in advance.
I'm proud of breaking the law, not because I broke a law, but because I opened my store on principle; the principle that peaceful, honest people in a supposedly free nation do have individual rights, and that these rights can only continue to exist and be exercised as long as even just a few individuals continue to exercise them in the face of bad laws and political persecution.
Unfortunately, the businesses who were "flouting the law" were telling the media that "it's obvious people want Sunday shopping," or that "the cash registers never stopped ringing," or that "the majority of Ontario shoppers want Sunday shopping."
Implicit in their message to the public was the belief that it's OK to break a law (a) if the majority want it, (b) if you can make money at it, or (c) if you have a desire waiting to be fulfilled.
The explanations offered were the worst of all possible justifications for breaking the law. When an individual or business breaks a law to bring about social change, there better be a good reason and I wasn't hearing any.
It was nothing new to me that most businessmen think they have little use for philosophical principles, yet here was a legitimate philosophic test of individual freedom being subverted by those who had the most to gain, had they appealed to the principle involved in the issue. It was being subverted because money (while being important) was more important to them than philosophy, even though without a proper understanding of the latter, their right to earn the former would invariably be lost to them.
Since it was obvious that there wasn't any money in it for me, I was one of the few whose motivations would not be subject to the social crime of earning a profit. The only morally justifiable reason to break a law is because it violates individual rights.
To prove how much I believed in the principle of the issue, I was correctly quoted by the press as saying that I was willing to continue to defy the law even after the upcoming Supreme Court ruling.
On December l8, a few days after I was charged, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Sunday closing laws were constitutional.
I was committed. I was going to jail on principle.
But a few days later, I must confess, I made what amounted to a face-saving decision. I would open Sunday, as promised, but instead of selling books, I'd give them away free to anyone who dropped by.
That way, I had thought, I'd be keeping my commitment to the public without risking a $l0,000 a day fine, and at the same time, I'd make my point, that the law must be defied in spirit, if not in fact. Giving books away seemed to be the way to accomplish both purposes.
I publicized my intentions in advance and the police dropped by my store on Saturday. They agreed that giving books away instead of selling them was within the law and that they had no objections to this.
As it eventually turned out, what initially began e-saving gesture on my part, was the best possible thing I could have chosen to do. When Sunday morning arrived, Freedom Party erected a display in my store, and every customer passing through was handed a written explanation of what I was trying to do, along with Freedom Party's literature on the issue.
I'd rather give a few thousand dollars worth of books to my loyal customers, I argued, than take their money and hand it over to David Peterson.
After giving away $l,500 worth of books to avoid being charged, the police phoned me and quite politely let me know that "after consultation on the matter, we have decided that letting people browse constitutes a contravention of the Act."
I was being charged for giving books away free!
Yet, without a doubt, the most hostile reactions I got came from fellow businesspeople. As it turns out, the biggest enemies of individual freedom, and worse, those most hypocritical about it by aligning themselves with "free enterprise" groups, are businesspeople themselves.
The truth of the situation struck home the day after the Supreme Court decision when a spokesman for the London Chamber of Commerce, a business group openly opposed to Sunday shopping, went one step further to advocate that "The law should be enforced to the point of arrest," and that government should pursue renewed prosecution and higher fines.
So much for the Chamber of Commerce, a group of businessmen supposedly dedicated to free enterprise, but apparently only when it suits them. A similar embarrassment to free enterprise occurred when the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and the Chamber of Commerce came out united in opposition to pay equity legislation. They rightly argued that pay equity was a violation of free enterprise, but they were really fighting pay equity simply because it would cost their members money. That's as far as their principles extend.
Why do groups supposedly dedicated to free enterprise attract individuals so opposed to it? Because businesspeople by and large do not understand principles, or the necessity of having to understand them.
Intellectually, they know that socialism and state intervention do not work, but they have allowed themselves to benefit by it. In so doing, they've compromised their principles so many times that, if the truth be known, what the CFIB and the Chamber of Commerce are attracting are the many opportunists who have seen these groups as lobbies for increased business privilege and power --- not for free enterprise.
Unfortunately, there is yet another well known group who appears to be falling into this trap, despite a public advocacy of "More freedom through less government."
You guessed it. The National Citizens' Coalition.
In April l987, Freedom Party participated in an exchange mailing with the National Citizens' Coalition. 550 Freedom Party supporters received an NCC solicitation on its campaign against pay equity, while 550 NCC supporters were invited to attend Freedom Party's dinner honouring Paul Magder, the Toronto furrier who had originally defied the Sunday closing laws and had taken his case to the Supreme Court of Canada.
Not one response from our mailing to the NCC membership in the Toronto area resulted in a dinner ticket being sold. On the contrary, we received over 25 responses that were openly hostile to our event and the principles of individual freedom. While, in fairness, we did receive five financial contributions from the NCC mailing, to receive five times that number in negative responses was astonishing from a group dedicated to "more freedom through less government."
What is it that would attract such people to this type of organization? Could it be that the NCC is falling victim to the same affliction that has seized the CFIB and my local Chamber of Commerce? --- where "freedom" and "free enterprise" aren't philosophical concepts, but words used to gain special privileges for members when that "freedom" benefits them?
Time will eventually tell, but when the three best-known business lobby groups in this country are advocating the kinds of "freedom" and "free enterprise" that they do, it's no wonder that so many have lost complete faith in free enterprise as a viable philosophy. What these groups need, especially from their members, is a reminder of what freedom of enterprise is: a value that cannot be compromised for illusory short-term gains.
Allow me to be among the first to remind them. Free enterprise is having the right to choose one's own means of livelihood without the fear of coercion from governments or from fellow "free enterprisers."
Sunday closing laws have to be abolished for the proper reasons, that is, because they violate individual freedom and denigrate the proper purpose of government. Otherwise, if the laws are abolished simply because "they're outdated" or because "people want Sunday shopping," nothing meaningful will have been accomplished.
People may be free to shop on Sunday perhaps, but they will not be any freer as individuals with inalienable rights until they recognize that every political issue has a principle at stake.
Well, I watched the show. Pretty amazing that the U.S. is demanding extradition of a man from Canada for selling seeds so they can put him in prison for life.
Marc Emery is very brave.
Here in the Bible Belt (SC) I'm used to shopping at WalMart on Sunday morning for bacon or eggs, but heaven forbid I want to buy a charcoal grill before 1pm. God doesn't like that, y'know.
The Super WalMart here actually has quarantine tape threaded through a barricade of shopping carts to keep shoppers away from "dry goods" before 1pm, but they'll let me clog my arteries with as much grease as I can haul out of what I afffectionately refer to as the "pork'n'more" dep't.
Not WalMart's fault, they're just obeyin' the local blue laws.
We're obviously veering off-topic here, but I wonder why the local zealots use, as a justification for their arguments, that it's immoral to force employees to serve the public on Sunday...yet, a huge tradition here in the South is to hit a big buffet after church. No regard in that case for the poor soul who was forced to work instead of attending church.
Really, it all seems pretty arbitrary to me.
Having known Marc for thirty years I agree.
One of the reasons I posted the article was to show what other laws he has helped change.
Good thread and nice work. Thanks.
This article appeared in Consent #13 (May-July 1990 )
Microcosm
- Marc Emery
Mr.Emery is a founding executive member and action director of the Freedom Party of Ontario.
"Save Our Neighbourhood Library --- talk about a motherhood and apple pie issue! What other things could possibly be more sacrosanct than the neighbourhood library?
That's what the canvasser at my front door on a chilling ten below night was imploring, asking me to sign a petition to save our local library (the W.O. Carson Library) from the budget- cutter's axe. She was the paragon of idealism, with all the fire, dedication, community spirit --- and economic ignorance --- necessary to face the arduous task before her --- to rally the neighbourhood, save the library, and win a victory against an unfeeling bureaucracy.
But the fact is, my neighbourhood library is underused. It experiences the lowest usage within the family of libraries in the city of London. In a city that is rapidly growing and expanding, the library board, with its finite budget, must allocate its limited money to the greatest number of potential library users.
When the crusader at my front door talked about the value of our library to the neighbourhood children, I explained that each day we kept our library open, we were depriving an even greater number of children and adults from using a library in another community. To me, ten children using a library in Masonville was of greater benefit than five children using the library in my neighbourhood for the same amount of money. It's a shame that our neighbourhood doesn't use the library more frequently, but that's the reality.
But my petitioner would have none of this. "Our neighbourhood deserves its own library," she protested.
I wondered what she could possibly have meant by her assertion. With taxes at a zenith now, and with performing arts centres, convention centres, aquatic centres and the like being continually added to the taxpayer's burden, surely it should have occurred to her that there is a limit to what a "community" can "deserve" when, frankly, it is asking someone else to pay for it.
This was the crux of the disagreement at my front door. Canvassers, petitioners, and lobby groups urging more government spending won't even acknowledge that they're advocating more taxes. They won't acknowledge that we are all paying --- paying a lot --- for all the dreams, utopias, conveniences, luxuries, that other people hatch up and then force us to pay for. I don't pay "taxes." I "invest". I'm not a "taxpayer". I'm an "investor".
Talk about "investment" strategies! Our local library is an "investment" in our community. A full-page ad in the March 2, 1990 London Free Press advocated a $400 million increase in social welfare spending, calling it an "investment" in the community while the word "taxes", a villainous word to be sure (but the only truthful one), was never used. London's mayor, Tom Gosnell, has referred to our local convention centre as an "investment"; newspaper editorials advocating increased spending in our government monopoly school system call it an "investment in our children's future our new Olympic-size aquatic centre is an "investment" in the Olympic athletes of tomorrow.
What each of these self-appointed "investment" councillors has in common is this: all of them are exploiting the democratic process to have everybody else pay for their pet project, because they and their friends haven't got the guts, commitment, or honesty to raise the money themselves. So they embark on crusades, not to raise the money privately, but to convince the rest of us that their dream is our responsibility, that although they are the prime beneficiaries of the increased taxes, we'll benefit too --- if not in any real, physical way, in some vague, hazy, intangible way. That's when we start seeing cliches like "quality of life", "civic pride", "community pride" and "working together" used as justifications to rob us of our hard earned tax-dollars.
I'm sure I was the only person in my whole neighbourhood who didn't sign the petition to save my local library. As a past aldermanic candidate in my municipal ward, and with intentions of being a future municipal candidate in my community, I knew that I was risking the loss of many votes by appearing to take a stand that was "against the neighbourhood". But I simply couldn't ethically sign a petition burdening other people with costs I didn't believe were their responsibility.
Instead, I offered a $25 donation to help keep the library going, suggesting that if 500 homes around the neighbourhood would do the same, we could probably keep the library going for quite a while. To which the canvasser replied: "Why should we have to pay for it?"
I even offered to volunteer three or four hours a week to the library as a token of my genuine community support, but this offer fell on deaf ears. It seems to me that's what genuine "support" is, giving of yourself for something that is of value. I simply cannot call it "support" when compulsion is being used against others in the interest of someone else's values.
I'm positive that even my $25 donation would have been welcomed had it been earmarked for a political campaign to increase taxpayer subsidies to "our" library. But to spend my donation directly on the library itself was, inexplicably, out of the question.
I am cynical enough about the political process to believe that my neighbours support the W.O. Carson Library --- as long as other people have the money crowbarred out of them. When some blood, sweat, toil and tears are required --- effort and cash of their own --- their "support" is revealed to be as thin as the veneer of their "investment" strategies.
And these days, that's the democratic process in microcosm.
Suddenly, the track of my readings for tonight's show seems prophetic, with a lot of it having turned up hypocrisy in law, variety in geographic attitude, and Old Trusty, factual obfuscation.
Surprisingly, CBS did a good job of reporting this story. They didn't try to make Emery look like a buffoon, like I'd expected, and appeared to have let him speak his piece.
The scam was sold to the public as a means for a handful of seriously ill patients to have their "primary caregivers" grow small amounts for them. It's turned into dope dens calling themselves clinics selling designer dope for hundreds of dollars an ounce to 150,000+ potheads claiming to have symptoms like insomnia or a headache.
So the law is cited as a defense by those who are acting outside its terms ... I don't see refutation of any tenets there.
It would be hard to make Marc look a bufoon even for CBS.
"age of consent laws are an unnecessary, punitive intervention by government into the lives of its citizens."
That conclusion is contrary to my definition: since there are such beings as non-adult humans, government must distinguish them from adults.
After seeing Dan Rather on the opening piece, I thought it was going to be a hit job on Emery. I, too, was surprised when it wasn't.
Did you notice the nice jackbooted DEA thug in the suit? He feels just soooo justified in trying to put Emery in jail for life.
That amazingly transparent "jackbooted DEA thug" was a riot with his ballsy bluster. Just like a Dem, he thinks he can fool more people than is realistic. The word "buffoonery" comes to mind, surprisingly in context with the agent, not Emery.
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